


All These Empty Hallways

by michals



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Brotherly Bonding, Drug Use, Drug recovery, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Ghosts, Hurt/Only Some Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Klaus Hargreeves-centric, Luther Hargreeves-centric, People Talk About Their Feelings For Once, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Sibling Bonding, Suicide, no ships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:26:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26606710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/michals/pseuds/michals
Summary: He can still talk to Luther, but Klaus only gets to know his brother after he's gone.
Relationships: Klaus Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves, Klaus Hargreeves & The Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves & Luther Hargreeves
Comments: 78
Kudos: 247





	All These Empty Hallways

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, I’m one of those people that shows my love for my favorite characters by tormenting them.
> 
> Bonus tags:  
> #you know how the show is fairly lighthearted? #this isn’t #there’s references to the comics but you don’t have to have read them #Klaus might actually be good at psychology #Five is a bit of a jackass but he has a good reason to be #and gets a turn in the therapist’s chair #hey these people actually talk about their feelings finally #the academy is in New York to make it easier on me #sorry for all the 80's and 90’s references
> 
> (Please heed the tags. This fic included suicide, specifically by gun.)

He’s never been sober long enough to contemplate on why it is but the fact is that most ghosts don’t come to him all bloody and broken. Some still wander around with their throats open, their chests caved in, limbs torn away and there’s probably a reason for it. But Klaus doesn’t like to think about it if he can help it. Ben was whole again in the afterlife, Dave hadn’t appeared with the wound in his chest, and thank fucking God Luther doesn’t come to him with a hole in his head.

He thinks maybe it’ll be impossible to stay sober enough to see him again. After it happened Klaus figured this time he’d never let it go, fuck why should he? Every time he cleans up they drag him back again. After one – after two, after three – what’s the point? Things aren’t great when he can’t see straight, can’t think clearly for 6 seconds, can’t feel his hands, but they’re better.

Better than this.

It’s the fucking house. It’s this stupid mansion. Allison didn’t stay long, went back to LA to her other family. The normal one. Vanya still has her apartment and Diego his basement. As messy and sad as they are they belong to them, they’ve picked out a little space in this world and made it their own. Klaus hasn’t claimed any space except the actual air his body takes up since he left the Academy. And Five, he lives in the house, technically, but at the same time he’s everywhere and nowhere at once.

So no one wanted it. Sell it, they all said at some point. It’d probably be worth millions. More than millions. Stuffed to the rafters with memorabilia, inventions, books and paintings and statues and all kinds of things worth a hell of a lot of money. But then what about mom? She can’t stay with Diego, not with Vanya, can’t go with Allison. And they can’t just leave her alone.

So Klaus inherits the house unofficially.

Reginald Hargreeves never left a will, of course he didn’t the bastard. Don’t make anything easy for us now, old Reggie boy. But if he had they all knew who it would have gone to. There was a very handy list even.

He closes all the bedroom doors. He stands in front of Ben’s for a long time, and then Luther’s for longer.

_“Did you…want to keep anything?” Diego asks Allison, standing at this door, looking out into a room full of a whole lot that still doesn’t amount to much._

_She stares for a long time. Shakes her head. “I have what I want of him.”_

_Klaus is high, very high, and his head swims as he listens to them from the open door of his room._

God dad would lose his mind to see his least favorite child in charge of his beautiful mansion. Klaus has absolutely no intention to show it a lick of respect either, with the exception of that hallway of bedroom doors where 7 little kids waited for what they’d be thrown into next. He pushes things off shelves just because he can, gets rid of all the ugly paintings he hated growing up, tosses books and leaves them where they land.

He can draw alright, but he can’t paint for shit. He’ll have to hire someone he supposes. Put Luther’s portrait up next to Five’s, put Ben’s on the other side. Reginald Hargreeves’s portrait burns beautifully in the fireplace. Klaus kills a whole bottle of his most expensive brandy as he watches it burn, playing through the CDs he’d left in his bedroom so long ago.

_“God he had such strange taste didn’t he?” Klaus says, dizzily thumbing through the records. So much 80’s pop, female singers from the 90s who sang sad folk music, here and there a Clash or Pogues album._

_“Hey!” Five’s voice comes at him sharp and angry, “Little respect huh?”_

_He snatches the album Klaus had been looking at – The Pretenders – and looks it over like Klaus might’ve wrecked it. He tucks it back in with the others and gives Klaus a look before popping away. Klaus hears his quick steps going down the stairs._

Grace cooks for him, three meals a day. He’s found out lately how goddamn tedious grocery shopping is. He got food at the shelters and in the rehab houses, when he wasn’t there he always managed to scrounge up cash for a cheeseburger and fries. He didn’t get hungry easy anyway, when you’re flying you kind of forget to be hungry. Diego sets it up so someone delivers the groceries once a week. He glares at Klaus when he comes to explain it.

“You’re so kind,” Klaus says, head somewhere between here and Timbuktu. “Such a good brother.”

Klaus isn’t too high to notice how Diego’s gaze goes hard and unfocused. Klaus isn’t too high to know exactly all the things he’s thinking.

Five does eat, surprisingly. And more than just flutternutter sandwiches. But he doesn’t stay and talk to Klaus when the food’s ready. Klaus isn’t always great company, Klaus isn’t company at all when he can’t manage to pick himself off the couch some days.

_There isn’t a suit big enough to put on him in the casket. Hell the casket was hard to make, but they didn’t want to cremate him like dad, they want him next to Ben. So he goes underground in his black turtleneck and black pants. They even keep the gloves on._

_It’s a weird twisted thought Klaus has watching as they all stand around, bright sunlight filtering through the clouds, that if only this had happened earlier Ben wouldn’t have been alone anymore._

It’s so fucking quiet. He comes home from some club or party and the silence of the mansion feels like it’s like this on purpose just to fuck with him. He slams doors, drops silverware, rattles everything in the house that will rattle. Sometimes Five will pop out of nowhere to yell at him, but Klaus is just so happy for the noise that he smiles and then Five gets angrier. Grace always goes through and picks everything up in the morning.

The CDs are nice but they’re all from so many years ago, back when he had to call this place home the first time around. They remind him so much of the past that he can’t stand to have them on all the time. He hasn’t touched the records in Luther’s room. He’d been protective of them in their paper sleeves, and Klaus knows he’s usually too tipsy to get the needle on right. He probably would scratch them like Five thinks.

Sometimes he fills the silence by talking to Ben. He’s felt like there’s a black hole following him around since he’s gone for good. Like an empty pocket in space sucking all the light in, and it’s always in the corner of his eye but when he turns around fast to see it it’s gone. Sure he looks like an idiot when he does it.

He tells Ben all the usual things, tells him how much he missed Grace’s mashed potatoes, and oh do you remember this song do you remember Allison would always sing along, and hey there’s that scorch mark on the carpet from when Diego tried to set his knives on fire and juggle them. He tries to imagine Ben’s responses, from the snarky to the sentimental. He does an okay job, he thinks.

He talks to Reginald too. “How’s it feel having two sons buried in your courtyard?” he asks the ashes in the fireplace.

He doesn’t talk to Luther, not yet.

_“He’s not, uhm…here?” Vanya asks, voice shaky. She has both hands around her coffee mug like somehow it’ll keep her anchored in place._

_Klaus swims up from the bottom of the pool that is his mind and his voice is gentle when he tells her, “No, he’s not.”_

He’s been living in the house – _his_ house – for 5 weeks before he realizes he’s really fucking bored. But he did this every day all day for almost two decades, how is he tired of it now? God, is he getting old? The speed and coke and ecstasy work the same as always but he’s too aware of it now. Before he was able to lose himself, everything he was, everything he’s been through, all those damn ghosts; it all just stopped existing. Now it’s like they’re lurking in the corners of the room, waiting for him to come down. So he goes faster to try and keep up.

Doesn’t work. What bullshit.

‘You know why it’s not working,’ Ben’s voice in his head says. Yeah yeah.

You live through two apocalypses, travel through time some, your asshole dad dies, you get tortured, fall in love and then lose your soulmate, start and then leave a cult, bring down a company that kills people that are already dead, and your favorite donut place gets blown up – it all kind of makes everything else pale in comparison.

You lose 3 brothers, 2 of them for good.

_“Don’t put Number One on it,” Vanya says, sounding concerned._

_Diego looks up from the gravestone template. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”_

_Klaus giggles and they both shoot disbelieving, angry looks at him. Klaus says, “Dad can take that down to Hell with him.” They seem to agree._

October 1st 2019 comes and goes and they do band together for the day. They turn 30, Five turns 59. Vanya brings a cake. The only flavor they ever all agreed on was coconut, of all things. 

_‘We were somehow both a unit – one entity with one birthday and therefore there was no need for any one of us to be celebrated individually – and yet singled out so specifically in our childhood that there was no mistaking dad’s intentions of building us up as a team while breaking us down as separate people. His goal no doubt was to control how we were meant to see ourselves.’_

_Vanya had written that in her book. Klaus_ had _read the thing once upon a time. No idea when._

‘You don’t want it to work,’ Ben But Not Ben says.

“I know!” Klaus says out loud to his empty room. That tie-dye tapestry of an elephant hanging over his bed is swirling around and around and he can’t make it stop and yet somehow he’s coherent enough for this.

“Why don’t you tell me something useful,” he says to no one.

_“Why not?” Klaus asks. He’s punchy and twitching. He’s so close to coming down and he needs to get something but his fucking guy says give him an hour._

_Five’s mouth twists, lip curling. He’s not looking up from his newest batch of equations written on the back of a cereal box. “It doesn’t work like that,” he spits, “it’s the same reason I can’t go back and save Ben.”_

_Klaus paces back and forth, runs his hands anxiously through his hair. Fuck Five for being angry all the time, why can’t he be angry? “Useless fucking power.”_

_Five whirls on him, looking as pissed off as he usually does and he looks like he’s about to snap, and bad this time, but Klaus isn’t gonna cower now. He wants to be angry too goddamn it._

_Five’s face falls, rage dropping away from his gaze. “Yeah,” he says quietly. “Yeah it is.” And with a flash of blue light he’s gone._

He lets it drop off slowly, not all at once because that’s sure as fuck not how this is gonna go. He knows that he shouldn’t replace the drugs with alcohol but oh it makes it so much easier. He’s gone through all of Reginald’s booze and he’s pretty sure Five’s hiding some of his own, and he doesn’t want to ask Diego to add it to the grocery list so he pawns some of dad’s stupid shit and makes runs to the liquor store two blocks away.

It sucks as bad as it usually does, sure as hell doesn’t make anything less boring.

‘You’re not bored-’ Ben Not Ben starts but Klaus cuts him off. He _knows_ dammit.

He finds himself in Ben’s room one afternoon before he even realizes he’s gone all the way upstairs, opened the door and sat on the bed. It’s pretty much untouched, a shrine in a way. Better than that gilded white casket, like who was he, Liberace? Ben’s dozens and dozens of books all still filed away neatly by author in the two shelves that take up most of the wall space. They’re not dusty because Grace comes in once a week and very carefully brushes them down. She does it to all the rooms.

He’s been in here plenty since Ben’s death, always with Ben. Somehow though, it’s not quiet. It feels…warm? Full? Ugh, he’s not a fucking poet (Luther was apparently…) but the room feels less like a gaping hole in the house and more like something softer and calmer. He hasn’t been sober enough to think about how he expected it’d feel but he’s surprised. He feels relaxed here.

He stops with his hand on Luther’s door. No. There’s the hole in the house. He leaves.

_Diego breaks the gun down into a dozen pieces, face blank, hands moving mechanically. He throws the pieces into the incinerator. Klaus flips them off as the flame turns them black._

“You seem…” Diego eyes him from across the kitchen table. “more lucid than normal.”

He’s not sober yet, he’s still working through an Oxy high and two shots of cheap vodka, but that’s really not that bad considering. He shrugs. “Ah ya know, went for a walk, got some fresh air, smelled some roses.”

Diego raises an eyebrow at him. Klaus knows he doesn’t really have a right to argue him when he’s been wandering around in La-La Land for the past two months. (Past…20 years, whatever) They eat the dinner Grace prepared and make small talk, talk about Allison and Vanya. About the new movie Allison’s just starting work on, little indie thing. Vanya’s gone back to teaching violin, joined a small community orchestra where things aren’t so competitive. Klaus has no clue where Five is when Diego asks. He sighs a little at the answer and Klaus gets pissed off at the ornery old man on his behalf.

“Is…the Alfred Nobel statue missing?” Diego asks as he walks through the foyer to the door, stopping by a now empty pedestal.

“That thing had dead eyes, I threw it out.” Well, no, he got like $100 for it. It was probably worth $1000, but oh well.

Diego looks like he wants to say something but gives an amused huff. He always thought the same thing.

_Allison’s still pretty when she cries, Diego stays all manly and stoic through the tears, Vanya’s cheeks and nose go bright red and she tends to shake a little. Five doesn’t cry, the bastard, but his eyes are wet. Klaus is riding a unicorn through a field of daisies._

‘We all have our own way of coping’, the rehab counselors always said. ‘And some of us are just wired to seek out the most self destructive ways.’

Well Klaus got the jackpot there, all his wires are frayed and sparking, he’s surprised they haven’t set a fire…actually wait, so he has caused a couple fires, not all on purpose though. He wonders if he’d still be this way – or some version of this way – if it weren’t for the dead people who follow him everywhere. If he’d been born a normal little boy would his head still be fucked up cause the chemicals are all working wrong?

Probably, he thinks. One of those stupid facts of life, sometimes your chemicals just work wrong. Luther’s were wrong too, just no one noticed.

He goes through all the fun, fun symptoms of withdrawal. He sweats and he aches and he throws up everything he eats for two days. He sleeps too much, he doesn’t sleep at all. That’s the real advantage of mixing alcohol with drugs, you gotta go through two different types of come-downs. Five finds him shivering his ass off and grumbles at him in a not-unkind way.

“For fucks sake,” he flashes and returns with an armful of firewood, “at least light the damn thing if you’re gonna stare at it all day. It’s fucking freezing in here.”

Klaus thanks him, then does it twice more just so he maybe actually listens. Klaus knows that the ashes of the portrait are long dissolved but he still feels like the old man is lurking somewhere in that fireplace, his ghost that he can’t see sitting in the flames, judging him like always. Ha, fuck you. Burn a little more why don’t you?

He turns down Five’s offer of a drink and Five goes still for a moment (a rarity, Klaus wonders if he’s like a shark, always has to be moving), contemplates Klaus. The look he gives is not-unkind.

_The second night, after everything had been cleaned up save the blood stain that won’t come out till they cut the carpet away entirely, Klaus pulls out a baggie from his sock and sits down on the stairs, looks down into the quiet house. The others are in the kitchen, talking, planning things. Maybe Allison’s in his room._

_He takes two pills just to be safe and he takes a deep breath._

_“Hey,” he says and it barely makes a sound. He tries again. “Hey, Lu-” But he doesn’t finish._

He wakes up on a Tuesday afternoon on the couch he’s been sleeping on for the past few months instead of his bed and he feels sober. He has to make sure, go down the checklist he’s developed in his head, marks off all the boxes. Yep, clear eyes, steady hands, able to walk in a straight line.

‘Proud of you,’ Not Ben says. Klaus has to roll his eyes.

He eats breakfast, showers, dresses, brushes his teeth, does the dishes, makes his couch-bed…ugh. He’s dawdling. Come on Klaus, let’s go. This is your thing. You summoned one brother.

He doesn’t know where to start. He’d been by Ben’s coffin when he conjured him but ghosts don’t always linger by their headstones. Sometimes it’s where they died, or they follow people around like with Hazel and Cha Cha. He doesn’t really want to go to where they found Luther so he supposes he’ll try the courtyard first.

It’s the end of October so it’s not too cold in New York but it’s getting there. He finds his old coat and some boots and trades his skirt for a decent pair of pants that don’t lace up on the sides. There isn’t a statue, yet at least. They got Ben’s fixed. Klaus stands in the middle of courtyard and looks around for a while.

‘Stop procrastinating.’ That’s not Ben, that’s himself for once.

He clears his throat, “Hey, uhm, Luther? Buddy?” Has he ever called Luther ‘buddy’ in his life? “You out here?”

Nothing answers him but the wind in the trees. He sighs. Alright, fine. How come it’s always the ones he doesn’t want that come knocking on his door?

He closes his eyes and focuses. Clenches his fists. He’s not sure that part actually does anything but it feels like it helps. He reaches out across the courtyard for any sign of someone, any sleeve or shoulder to snag but still nothing. He’s trying, really he is trying, tries for so long that he feels like he’s gonna give himself an aneurysm.

He takes himself out of it and makes himself breathe for a while. God, he always forgets just how disorientating that is when he tries too hard. Good ol’ Reggie never gave a damn about that. Yeah, well, he’s in the fireplace now and guess what? Klaus won. It’s not like, the kind of victory you throw a party for, but he’ll take it.

He goes back inside the house, stops for a second inside the door, tentatively calls “Luther?” Silence.

He wanders around for a while, room by room, doesn’t force himself as much as in the courtyard but spreads himself out across the house to see if something pings. Stands in front of the bedroom door but doesn’t go in. That’s okay, he thinks, maybe he isn’t ready to talk yet, he’ll try again tomorrow.

_He wasn’t ever particularly close with his brother. They were about as opposite as siblings could be. Big, brash, brave, capable…scrawny, nervous, loud, rebellious. He wasn’t the one he went to for consolation – that was usually Ben – never reached out to him and got the same in return. But he was comforting, that’s the word Klaus would use for it. As long as Luther was in charge it’d be fine, he’ll know what to do, as long as he did something then Klaus usually didn’t have to._

_Ok yeah, he was annoying. The suck-up, the favorite child, prone to being kind of a dick when people didn’t fall in line. Never tried to understand Klaus and his powers but then again, none of them really did that kind of thing with each other. They were a team and yet insular unto themselves, more going on inside their heads than ever got put into words. But that’s how dad wanted it, if they could work together on the field then what did he care if they got along outside of it? They learned early not to fight with each other in front of him and he never asked what happened if one of them showed up with a split lip or black eye (that was almost always Luther and Diego though)._

_Klaus liked when Luther would play music, usually during their half hour of free time while he worked on a model and sometimes at night with the stereo turned down low but Klaus could still hear it through the vents. When he got older and higher sometimes he’d lay down on the floor right next to it whenever Luther played something softer and calmer. There was one he liked about some woman named Sunny coming home who walked on a wire or worked with tools or something. (He’d know it if he heard it again.)_

_They all walked out of that mansion with a catalogue of hang-ups. Diego got angry, Allison got distant, Klaus got high; they all knew even before they were what the therapists call ‘emotionally intelligent’ enough to know that Reginald Hargreeves had done a number on them. Except Luther never left the mansion, never left Reginald. Sucks to be him, they thought, it’s what he wanted anyway._

_Well, hindsight’s 20/20 and all that._

He tries again on Wednesday, and then on Thursday. Just more silence. He hates waiting, he likes things to happen fast, right when he wants them. Put it in your blood stream and feel it right away. Nope, sorry Klaus, gotta deal with that delayed gratification this time. If anything happens at all.

Cause that might be case, it might not ever happen. It’s entirely possible it’ll work about as well as conjuring dad (hopefully minus the massively disappointing trip to the afterlife) or maybe Luther got to skip that part and go where Ben is now. That’d be nice for him, for all of Klaus’s waiting he thinks he’d be ok with that.

On Friday Five sneaks up on him and gives him a heart attack.

“Jesus Christ! Unfair advantage old man,” he says with his hand over his chest. Even ghosts don’t get the drop on him like Five does.

“What’re you doing?” Five asks, coffee in one hand, peering around the library where Klaus had been trying to concentrate.

“Oh, ya know, just rethinking the layout. Think I might get an interior designer in here, this place is a little too…evil old man chic.”

Five narrows his eyes at him. “You think you’re gonna find him here?”

Klaus waves a hand, “Well maybe not _here_ here.”

Five stares at him for a beat longer before popping over to the classical Greek section and scanning the titles. “What if he doesn’t want to talk?”

Klaus shrugs, looking down at a stack of books of transcendentalist poetry. Klaus always liked the beat movement better. (He had just missed seeing Ginsberg at Berkeley by a day back in ’61) “Then he doesn’t need to talk.”

He won’t remind Five that it was Klaus that Luther came to when he found out about the unopened packages, that Klaus was the one who…sort of helped him with that. Five keeps looking at the shelf.

“Did you want to talk to him?” Klaus asks. Five pauses (again, a surprise). He pops over to a different section of the shelves and then to the door. Klaus can kind of tell from here that it looks like some history book instead.

“He didn’t want to talk before, don’t know why he’d want to now.” The smile he gives is sarcastic.

What a jackass thing to say, Klaus thinks. Ben thinks it too. He calls out to Five before the he disappears again.

“Hey, where do you go all the time?”

Five regards him for a moment. “Where ever the hell I want.”

Fair enough.

_Luther was The Leader, he was Number One, and he took that seriously. Sometimes the missions were a blur, punching and kicking and knives and explosions, but afterwards, every time, he’d call off their numbers like he was taking attendance. And he always did it in order, always put Diego first even when they were fighting._

_“Number Four?” he’d call out and Klaus would answer ‘here’ and Luther would look him in the eye to make sure he was really there. (For a while he’d still start to call out for Five but have to catch himself.) It was comforting._

_Klaus remembers one time they’d put out a fire threatening an apartment building and once everything was smoldering he’d blinked awake in a pile of dirt and ash and had been too dazed to answer. Then there was suddenly wood and rebar being thrown around and Luther dropped down next to him._

_“Can you walk?” Klaus wasn’t sure. Luther didn’t even hesitate, he’d slung him over his back, Klaus’s arms immediately wrapping around his neck and holding tight as he climbed back out._

_“Number Fi- Number Six?”_

On Sunday Klaus flings the door to Reginald’s bedroom open hard enough for it to bounce back at him. He steps inside and surveys the room.

“Alright old man,” he announces. “Out out out.”

He fills up 5 trashbags with clothes and shoes and all of his piddly little crap. He considers throwing it in the mausoleum and laughs about it. But instead he leaves it on the curb for the garbage truck, no poor soul looking through a Goodwill should have to wear any of it.

_Klaus stopped being called Number Four the second he left the house for good. It felt fucking wonderful. Reginald had never once used their real names, but now he’s Klaus, thank you very much, Klaus. Not some number, not just a baby Reginald looked at and decided he was 4 th in line in terms of usefulness. He loved hearing other people say it, people who weren’t the same nine people he’d been surrounded by this whole life. He even loved it when police officers said it, looking down on him with his hands handcuffed to a chair, giggling and stoned stupid. _

_He’d even felt happy when his brother and sisters reclaimed theirs too. It was Allison Hargreeves’s name up on the big screen, Vanya’s name on her book, Diego’s on the police reports._

_But Luther was always Number One. The label barked out by Reginald in training, on the field with that tone that was always angry no matter what. Klaus imagines it echoing through the empty halls, long after everyone else was gone. A number, not a name._

It’s Tuesday again. He’s on the stairs of all places, exactly where he’d been when he hadn’t been able to say it before. He’s been saying it for days now, he says it almost idly, not really expecting a response.

“Hi Klaus,” comes the response.

He turns, Luther’s a couple of steps up, looking down at him. Klaus specifically doesn’t jump, doesn’t let himself look surprised – calm, he wants to be comforting. For once.

“Hey-” _Don’t say ‘big guy’_ , “Hey Luther.”

Luther doesn’t look like Ben, wait well obviously, but it’s the aura that’s different. Ben looked like he’d simply stepped out of time, looked like he had only days before. Grew along with Klaus like he should’ve in the first place. Luther looks kind of hazy, like he’s not completely here.

“Heard me calling?” Klaus asks, which is stupid because of course he did.

Luther nods, “Yeah, for a couple days now.”

“Glad you picked up the phone,” Klaus gives a wan smile, a thin laugh. Luther gives something that might be a smile, either way it’s forced.

“Sorry I left a mess,” he says.

Klaus twists further on the step, pretty much sideways on them now. “No no, it’s fine. Totally fine.” But Luther doesn’t look convinced.

“Place looks different.”

“Yeah, I’ve been, uhm, redecorating.” Klaus gives a wave of his hand towards the foyer below where most of the busts and paintings and other Reginald themed adornments no longer clutter it up.

“It’s nice,” Luther says.

“Thanks,” Klaus says, and smiles for real.

For as long as Klaus has been planning this, trying for this, he actually doesn’t know what to say. He can’t lead with those Big Questions that linger around the house like a fog, doesn’t want to scare Luther away. Or make him feel…worse. Saying something about the weather feels safe right now but very stupid. He’s about to jokingly ask where Curly’s gold is just to say fucking anything when the front door opens.

Vanya pokes her head in, “Oh, hey Klaus. I was wondering if you and mom wanted to grab dinner.”

Klaus turns and Luther’s gone.

_“I like this one,” Vanya says and hands Allison a piece of paper from the small stack in front of her. It’s one of the poems they found tucked in the packages that only got opened when Luther found them hidden under the floorboards._

_There’s around 30 poems, maybe there’d been more but these were the ones deemed good enough to send home. Klaus leans over Allison’s shoulder to read it._

_“Yeah, this one’s good,” Allison says, voice soft like it’s been for the last few days._

_Klaus agrees. It’s all space themed and somehow…airy feeling? He wishes he was one of those people who got high and saw music, wonders what all these words would look like as colors._

He doesn’t tell Vanya or mom or anyone else just yet. First he’s gotta make sure it wasn’t his mind playing tricks on him, which, even sober, is a decent possibility. And then, if he’s sure, then…

Either way he’s gonna be more prepared next time, he’s gonna actually say something useful. No references to 90’s movies or the weather. Wednesday there’s nothing, but then again Five is clattering around the house the whole day. Some new theory or experiment or who knows what (Klaus liked art and English classes, alright) and is popping around the library and the kitchen and his room in an unpredictable cycle. At one point, while Five’s drinking his 18th coffee of the day with his nose in some quantum physics book, Klaus has the sudden strong urge to tell him. But it leaves when Five leaves.

Luther’s not on the stairs the next day but Klaus finds him in the hallway by their rooms.

“Hello again,” he says, cheerfully as possible as he sits cross-legged a couple feet away.

Luther seems to be contemplating the ceiling til Klaus sits down. “Hey Klaus.” There’s a weak attempt at friendliness there.

Klaus opens his mouth to ask ‘how are you feeling’ because frankly he can’t feel _good_ but Klaus doesn’t know exactly how the hell he should feel. But Luther cuts him off.

“You’re the expert- well, you’re more of an expert on this kind of thing,” he asks, back against the wall between his and Allison’s rooms, “why do I still look like this?”

Oh, wow. Klaus does not have an answer for that. Luther still has his gorilla physique, broad shoulders and wide chest, the gloves still hiding his hands. Klaus doesn’t know how this works, he’s absolutely not an expert (he feels then, probably for the first time in his life, guilty that he isn’t smarter about this, that yes he should know more about it). Everyone looks like how they did when they died, except most don’t have the wounds. He is so so _so_ glad Luther doesn’t have the wound.

“I don’t know,” he admits, “it’s just the way it is.”

“That’s bullshit,” Luther mutters.

“Agreed,” Klaus says.

And there’s the quiet again. Klaus abandons the ‘feeling’ question because it’s obvious how Luther feels. Dammit. He realizes then that he actually only had that one prepared. Wow, he really needs to practice this shit.

“So Five still lives here?” Luther asks.

“Oh, yeah,” Klaus says, then tilts his head back and forth, “well sort of. He’s like the strangest roommate ever. You think he’s gone to fucking…Namibia or something and then suddenly he’s banging down the bathroom door screaming that you’re using up all the hot water.”

There’s just the faintest hint of a smile on Luther’s face, Klaus feels goddamn triumphant.

“And you live here too? I mean, you like, own it now?” It’s not angry at all, he just sounds curious.

“Yeah, guess so,” Klaus answers, “didn’t have anywhere better to be I suppose. I mean, can you imagine me in an apartment? That I pay for?”

Luther appears to think about this. “Yeah?”

Oh, right. They don’t actually know each other as well as he wishes they did. Klaus knows what he looks like to strangers and the curse of the Hargreeves kept them basically that for a long time. Like, ‘oh maybe Klaus is a normal person when he’s not tripping balls but good chance he’s not’. Somehow Luther, who did eventually seem to genuinely want to think the best of them all, has been convinced of that ‘maybe’.

“No no,” Klaus waves his hand in the air, “a studio apartment on the upper East side is just not _me_. I have to be dramatic and take over the family mansion that takes up a whole city block, obviously.”

Another almost smile. Ok Klaus, keep it up.

“Everyone else gone back to their own places?” Luther asks. Klaus knows which one he really wants an answer about, wants to know if Allison really went all the way back to LA. If he’s been roaming around the place then he obviously hasn’t seen her.

“Yeah.”

Luther just hums, looks down at his hands.

“Hey!” Klaus perks up, an absolutely wonderful idea in his head, “So I’ve been cleaning out the old man’s crap-” (Luther winces just a little at that and Klaus does actually feel bad but barrels on) “-and getting rid of all the fun bullshit like the records of our training and the goddamn…penmanship practice books and nonsense. Is there something in this house you want me to burn?”

Great idea Klaus. (His voice.)

There’s the threat of Luther getting defensive, of him fighting Klaus down about wonderful ol’ dad’s legacy and everything he did for them and what they owe him-

“You remember that stopwatch?” Luther asks.

“I do yes! Fucking glued to his hand.”

“That thing.”

“I can absolutely do that,” Klaus assures, feels himself smiling probably far too brightly.

A door slams, Five appears in the hall. He looks down on Klaus suspiciously but whatever those suspicions are he doesn’t bother to voice them as he walks by to his room. Luther’s gone again.

“See you tomorrow?” Klaus says to the empty hallway.

_Allison told them all proudly that’s she’s going to go to Hollywood, that she’s going to be in the biggest movies in the world. She preened happily when they all told her that absolutely she will. Diego’s going to a cop. Less praise but understandable. Ben wanted to work in a library. Ok Ben, aim high. But it suits him and actually once the thought’s in his head Klaus couldn’t imagine him anywhere else._

_Klaus had no fucking clue what he wanted to do or where he wanted to go but he wanted it as soon as he could. He’d already found that taking the extra strong pain pills from the first aid kits was amazing and kept all the ghosties at bay for a while, so he supposed he’d do more of whatever that is. Luther said he wanted to go to space and Klaus and Diego laughed. Klaus wasn’t trying to be mean but it was funny._

_“Pick something realistic space boy,” Diego told him. Luther told him to shut up._

Alright so Luther doesn’t stick around when someone else shows up. Obviously it’s not cause he doesn’t want them to see him, so that means he doesn’t want to see them. He can understand that (there’s a voice in his head that he wishes he could contribute to Ben that tells him hey maybe he’s special cause Luther wants to talk to him and maybe it has nothing to do with his powers, cause like he doesn’t _have_ to). 

“Mom,” Klaus asks, fork full of eggs halfway to his mouth, “Do you…miss people?”

She cocks her head, hair so perfectly in place it doesn’t move. “What do you mean honey?”

Klaus shrugs, talks around a mouthful. “You know, like Ben. Or Pogo or Luther.” Not dad.

“Of course I do,” Grace answers but her smile doesn’t waver.

Klaus tries to keep from bouncing on the fronts of his feet too much as he moves through the house. Why’s he nervous? It’s just Luther, he’s never been nervous around Luther, not really. It’s been a week and three days since he’s been sober, that has to be it. He’s just antsy. Also by now he’d usually be hounded by a dozen ghosts whining and bitching about all kinds of things, maybe with their guts out, eyes bleeding, tongues waggling.

But he actually hasn’t left the house in a while and – against all preconceived notions – the Umbrella Academy house is pretty devoid of pissy specters. Dad’s gone of course, and Ben finally moved on. He’s pretty sure Pogo either jumped right into The Great Beyond (whatever that means) or perhaps it doesn’t work with chimps? He has no clue. But then hadn’t he said Luther’s blood was closer to his than human, but he’s still here…

“Hey!” he practically shouts when Luther finds him in the library instead of the other way around. Good sign. He does not give a giddy little jump but it is very close. “Look what I found.”

He lets the stopwatch drop and catch on its lanyard around his fingers, swings it back and forth. “Figured you’d want to bear witness.”

Luther seems taken aback by the stopwatch, like it’s going to jump at him. He watches it sway for a moment before he nods. “Yeah. Yeah, let’s go.”

They go to the bowels of the mansion down to the incinerator where their ancient ass furnace gets its heat from. This’ll work better than the fireplace, it’s hotter and the plastic will melt faster.

He gives a grandiose gesture when he gets to the incinerator, the stopwatch flying around on his fingers. Luther’s eyes go to the fire and it’s only then that Klaus gets a sharp shock of fear that maybe there’s some trace of the gun there but when he gives a quick check out of the corner of his eye there’s only the usual kettle of flames.

Here’s where he’d ask if Luther wanted to do the honors but he catches himself before he does. God there’d be a fuck-up for the ages. He winds the lanyard around the stopwatch and with no further fanfare tosses the thing into the fire. It takes a bit before it starts to really melt but it is oh so satisfying when it does. Klaus also wants to watch the thing liquefy and he gets a little too mesmerized by it so when Luther speaks it almost makes him jump.

“Every time he clicked that thing-” Luther mimes holding one in his hand, his thumb hitting an imaginary button, “I got so scared. Like my time was going to be worse than yesterday’s, and the day before. That somehow I was only ever going to get worse. And I didn’t know what worse would mean to him.”

Klaus’s heart clenches. That’s a new one. They all knew their times for every race and challenge, knew exactly where they stood every time. Luther usually came out on top, as expected. Klaus was often last.

He’s surprised to hear his own voice saying, “Remember how he’d make us wait for dinner cause of that? If you came in anything but first place and it took 45 seconds to get up the stairs we’d have to wait 45 minutes to eat?”

There’s a distant, conflicted look in Luther’s eyes (he’s still hazy, still not totally here). He very rarely had to wait, 4 out of 5 times he was first to eat. Klaus sometimes had to wait an hour or more after everyone else.

“Yeah,” Luther says quietly, watching the stopwatch burn.

Crap, this isn’t what Klaus wanted, he didn’t want to make Luther feel bad. He’s already dead it’s not like he’s gaining anything from it.

Wait. Dammit. It strikes Klaus then more than it has until now that he’s really dead. This is his brother and he’s gone. This is such bullshit. He shouldn’t get to talk to his own brother like this only because he’d shot himself in the fucking head.

“Pork chops taste sooo much better cold, I promise you you were missing out,” Klaus says, as much confidence in his voice as he can manage. Luther looks almost bewildered by this response, but somehow, by some grace, he gives that almost smile.

_Luther smiled for the cameras, for the newspapers and the TV and the Teen Beat articles. Proudly standing by the team, his team, a job well done in the headlines. Klaus can’t say for certain he ever saw Luther smile much outside of that._

_Maybe it’s just that he didn’t for him, surely he did for Allison. Luther and Allison clicked early, when they were just little things. Growing up Klaus attributed it to a shared superiority complex but looking back that feels like a mean oversimplification. They all grabbed at any kind of connection they could. They had 6 siblings and 3 caretakers and that was their whole world, the only time they ever saw the rest of it was during those missions, those photoshoots and interviews._

_Luther and Allison felt normal to Klaus growing up, for as much as normal meant to him. They seemed confidant and sure, like maybe by sheer personality alone they’d succeed in the world outside of the academy. The rest of them were too weird, too awkward. Especially Klaus. Klaus felt his very limbs moved too ridiculously, like anyone could look him in the face and see ‘freak’ written on his forehead. So he decided ‘fuck it, I’ll be a freak’, and goddamn if it didn’t work for him._

_But it was Allison and Vanya who proved to be the normal ones (for a while anyway). Allison going above and beyond normal even, proving she was so much more than the Umbrella tattoo on her arm. Klaus has never, and will never, ask her how she made it so far so fast. That’s for her and her alone and Lord knows he can’t blame her. Vanya chose normal in the opposite direction. Quiet, easy, a day in and day out type of life. Klaus finds himself truly jealous of it from time to time. What it might mean to get up, go to work, eat dinner and go to bed every night and not worry about the muttering of dead voices in his ear._

_When Klaus watches Allison get in the taxi after the funeral to go back to LA, to the place she’s chosen as her new home, he wonders if Luther had felt like he’d been left behind._

“I hate this hallway,” Luther – the ghost of him – says, Klaus trailing behind. It’s the one off the main entrance, every portrait they’d ever had painted lined up in a neat row. As the frames get newer and the siblings get older faces disappear. First Five, then Ben, Diego, Klaus, Allison – til only Luther remains. And what a sad portrait it is, Luther stoic and empty eyed with Hargreeves beside him.

Why’d he even keep having them made, Klaus wonders. Just to make some kind of point? What was the point – look Luther, only you’re loyal enough, the only one, everyone else has abandoned you, everyone else has left you in this place.

Oh. Wait.

“Yeah you’d think he’d find a better painter. I look like Robert Smith in half of these. I mean, I could look like someone less cool I suppose.”

Luther’s not looking at him so he’s not sure if the joke lands. But Luther knows The Cure, he has at least one of their albums, Klaus had heard it through the vents.

“You…never saw dad around here?” Luther asks, looking at him from around one hulking shoulder. He sounds like he’s not sure what he wants the answer to be.

Klaus almost automatically tells him about the little dad ghost he’s invented that sits in the fireplace, scowling at him, but stops himself because it’s ridiculous and also not what Luther’s looking for.

“Besides getting a fairly decent shave and being told that yes, I did win the Most Disappointing Child award like I always suspected when I saw him in the clouds, no.”

Luther looks at the last portrait, just him and dad. He gives a faint chuckle, “Guess it makes sense I’d end up being the real phantom of this place.”

 _Ouch_ Luther. He’s laughing, but at what cost? Klaus doesn’t even have a comeback for that one. ‘You’re the only one who deserves it’ sounds like it should be reassuring but it really, truly is not.

“Want me to smash it?” Klaus asks, gesturing the portrait.

Luther only pauses for a beat, “No, leave it, it’s fine.”

Klaus is going to start taking psychology courses, he’s going figure out what the hell all this shit means for everyone cause right now he feels like he’s bobbing around in one of those safety rings that’s still tethered to the ship but he’s gotta start pulling on the rope to bring himself back in. Except the idea of him in any kind of medical program that isn’t outpatient is patently ridiculous.

“Why?” he asks, surprised cause he didn’t even mean to say that.

Luther looks over to him, eyebrows furrowed. “Why what?”

“Why keep it? There’s plenty of other pictures. I mean it doesn’t even capture your good side.”

Luther seems thrown off a bit by the question but shrugs. “I think I look pretty good in it.”

He looks like a mannequin dad set up next to him. A prop of the perfect son, the one who stuck around to deal with his shit. But…then again it’s Luther before the accident, Luther who looks tall and strong but not gorilla version tall and strong. Actually Klaus might be onto something with this psychology shit.

They didn’t take pictures growing up besides for the press; no Polaroid’s or disposable cameras and boxes of snapshots. They did portraits in this family. And then there’d been a long time between those and the pictures Allison and Vanya and even Diego had taken with their phones after they averted the multiple apocalypses. (Klaus had had a phone only once for two days and he couldn’t tell you for a million dollars where it ended up. There’d been the briefest discussion of Luther getting one but he’d curled his too large hands with their thick fingers into fists behind his back and politely declined.)

“The Variety article was better,” Klaus says.

“You saw that?” Luther’s eyebrows jump up.

It was a random interview, Luther had popped back into the spotlight momentarily years ago after saving some visiting diplomat. It was only about two pages but there’d been a nice photo of him smiling in his new uniform. Klaus had found it in a waiting room of a methadone clinic. For the life of him he can’t recall a single word of it, had been too strung out to even register what it meant to be looking at the brother he hadn’t seen since he’d fled the house.

But for now he says, “Yep. You looked very…All American.”

Luther tilts his head as he considers this and then gives a little nod like he approves. “I liked that interview.”

_He’d been trying to be sneaky, but he’d never been the most graceful of people, so he’d managed to take out the bedside lamp and the clock as he fell through his bedroom window. He’d been contemplating if he’d actually managed to break a rib as he lay on the floor when Luther had rushed in._

_“Klaus?” He was wearing the standard Umbrella Academy pajamas, the hem of his pants legs an inch above his ankles. Klaus had only been gone for two months and his brother was already taller than when he left._

_“Oh, Luther! Hiya!” Klaus managed to find his feet and decided no, probably didn’t break a rib but then again he might not even notice with the pills._

_“What are you doing here?” Luther asked, voice low, glancing back down the hallway. Klaus froze up, the noise might’ve woken up dad. They’d paused for a long moment but there was no opening of a door or the approaching of footsteps._

_“Just crashing for the night,” Klaus said, crawling across his bed like a cat and dropping heavily onto it. His head was a complete mess, pretty sure the shit the guy gave him had been cut with something less than pure. He was nearer the house than a shelter and despite every brain cell that he had left telling him not to cause fuck, what a mess that would be to deal with dear ol’ dad while blitzed out of his skull a couple months after he’d supposedly run out for good this time, he really just needed a place to sleep._

_“Do uhm,” Luther muttered and Klaus’s eyes popped open, genuinely having forgotten he was there. “Do you want me to wake Grace? She can make you some dinner or something.”_

_The thought of food made Klaus want to vomit. “Hmm, no, I’m good. Just a nap, I’ll be gone by morning.”_

_Luther shifted on his feet but didn’t say anything. Klaus started to drift, somehow it actually felt nice to be in his old bed, the smell of his pillow and the feel of the blankets familiar. And Luther was there. Luther’s comfortable._

_He was on the edge of sleep when Luther came over and gently picked up the lamp and the clock and set them back on the stand. Thanks Luther, he thought but he couldn’t actually make the words come out. The hallway light went out and Klaus was gone to the world._

_He’d been the last of his siblings save Luther to officially leave the mansion, still used it as something of a halfway house in his most desperate moments, sneaking in to avoid dealing with anyone, but that night had been truly the last time. He woke up to a quiet house and a plate of leftovers by his bed. There was still no way he could stomach it so he just went back out the way he came, and it took a while to realize who’d actually put it there._

Klaus did not get clean right after coming back from 1963. He’d lost Ben for good this time and for all the times he’d annoyed Klaus suddenly not having his brother at his back – trying to be his conscience, trying to challenge him to be better, to console him – was devastating. There was always the vague idea that he could lose Ben, but he’d become so constant that Klaus almost never even entertained it. Ben had been his brother more than he’d been anyone else’s, selfish thought but true as far as Klaus is concerned.

And then there was Dave. He’d _tried_ this time, really he had tried. Just this one thing, universe, can’t he just get this one thing right? He knew, had accepted, that he couldn’t keep Dave, he couldn’t ever be more than a beautiful memory, he just didn’t want him to die. If he could just have that, please.

But that’s not how the universe works and Klaus is painfully aware of this fact. He hasn’t checked to see if Dave has an obituary. Maybe he lived, maybe he grew old, but Klaus knows hope is a fragile thing.

He fiddles with them from time to time, does it so unconsciously that he doesn’t know he’s doing it so it takes him a bit to realize that Luther is watching him play with the dogtags.

“Just a habit,” he says with a shrug, dropping them.

“Have you ever…” Luther says, then just gives a slight wave of his hand towards himself.

“Found him? Like you you mean?” Luther nods. “No. No, no I…don’t really want to know if he’s out there or not.” He’d be in his 70’s now, if he’s still alive.

Luther looks out across the courtyard from where they’re sitting in the gazebo. Klaus has officially donned a non see through shirt.

“Did you ever love anyone else?”

Hmm. Good question, Klaus supposes. Maybe in small fleeting ways. “Not like him.” He looks Luther over, less hazy today. “Kind of how Allison was your one and only.”

Luther ducks his head, looks down at his hands as he rubs them together. Ghosts don’t get cold but they tend to do small human things, little routines, for a while afterward. “I don’t actually think…I really loved Allison. I mean, not like that.”

Klaus can’t help cocking an eyebrow at him. Had that not been a running theme through their adolescence? Luther and Allison and their budding illicit romance? Luther’s infatuation even after they’d reunited? At times Klaus found it so damn shameless that he wanted to gag. That they had parted ways, not to see each other again for years had been a genuine surprise.

“I loved her…love her,” he clears his throat a little (human habit) and Klaus feels a little jolt of sadness at the thought of ‘loved’ versus ‘love’ when it comes to the dead talking. “But I think I just wanted to be close to her, and that’s what made sense. It was always in books and those magazines we were in, all those ones she read.”

Klaus pauses, two warring options in his head. To tell, or not to tell. He goes with tell. “Allison said the same thing,” he admits gently.

She and Klaus had been at the bar, two days after, both tipsy and fuzzy headed. Allison had confessed the same in almost those exact words. Klaus supposes it’s fair. Locked up in a house, away from anyone else their own ages, your head gets messed up and you play at normal the best you can. Klaus wasn’t good at that though.

“That girl, ya know, from the club?” Klaus asks, following a growing suspicion down an alleyway.

Luther kind of slumps, almost pouts really. “I…didn’t actually like that.” Follows it with a fairly emphatic, “At all.”

Luther sure hadn’t looked happy about it Klaus could tell even if he was teasing him. Probably missed a cue there didn’t he? His own virginity had been lost under the influence of, and was celebrated with, a whole lot of pot. That’s a memory he wishes he could take back, try it over again. There are probably a lot more of those, he just doesn’t remember them.

“That’s okay big guy-” (oh whoops, dammit, Luther flinches) “Not everyone likes that kind of stuff.”

Not that they had a chance to figure it out. Not that Reginald Hargreeves ever gave his children the birds and bees speech. Not like Pogo or Grace could do it. No, they were an experiment and for all that they reached for their own identities there was a lot that got tossed out the window because figuring shit like that out didn’t play into taking down a villain with a camera for a head. Let them have records and model airplanes and lava lamps, but don’t let them get too complacent.

Klaus blows out a stream of air and it’s just cold enough to see it.

_“He’ll come back, right?” Vanya asked in a small voice, the six of them sitting at the kitchen table, homework in front of them._

_Five had been gone a week at this point. They go through the motions of their day to day lives, their training and their school and so far Reginald hasn’t said one word about him._

_“Dad knows where he is,” Diego said._

_“Diego,” Allison snapped, glanced over to where Grace was starting to prepare dinner but hadn’t turned around. “If he knew he’d tell us.”_

_“Maybe not,” Diego grumbled. Vanya’s face fell even more._

_“It’s special training,” Luther said, back straight as looked out over them. “Something secret and important.” He said it with conviction, like he really did know something they didn’t. There’s a part of Klaus that believed him, because of course Luther would know out of all of them, dad would’ve told Number One. But there’s another part that was quickly losing faith they’d see their brother again soon._

_“Of course it is,” Allison agreed, “he wouldn’t have just run away.”_

_He may have, Klaus thought. Last week he’d spent all night in the mausoleum for the third time. He felt even there at the table like the ghosts were lurking nearby, creeping closer, ready to steal his breath. Five may have run away._

_Six months later Reginald put up the portrait of Five in the great room. Klaus hated looking it. He got panic attacks, afraid that Five’s ghost would come to him but he told himself over and over that he’s not dead. Vanya left out sandwiches, and she knew Five better than the rest of them. He’d come back._

_Luther looked up at the portrait and Klaus could read regret in his expression._

Five was the only one brave enough to venture into the basement of the mansion, the place that usually only Pogo and Reginald ever went to. They all knew what was down there and they were never expressly forbidden from it, they just really didn’t want to go inside.

In the bowels of the building, down past the boiler room, is a large storage area. Klaus doesn’t know what it looks like but he can imagine orderly lines of shelves all neatly labeled with the objects on display: ‘Murder Magician’s Saw’, ‘Valex Valex’s Laser Goggles’, ‘Partial Remnant of Terminaut’. A whole museum dedicated to the gadgets and weapons and paraphernalia of their enemies.

It’s absolutely hilarious now, and had been to Klaus as soon as he first took LSD, that a bunch of preteens had been considered the only defense against people with names like The Murder Magician.

He’s not sure what exactly Five was doing down there. If it were up to Klaus he’d have had the place locked up and sealed for good. Five had tried a couple of times to bring it up with the rest of them and they all shot him down very firmly. No thanks, don’t need to be reminded of the time Dr. Terminal almost cut Allison’s hand off. He’d been self aware enough since then and hadn’t tried again and hadn’t brought anything out to show off. He hasn’t been back down since Luther though. They all know why but no one’s said anything and no one’s ever going to.

“You cleaned out dad’s room,” Five says one morning.

Klaus looks up from a Teen Beat magazine he’d stolen from Allison’s room. He was a cute kid if he may say so himself. “Hmm? Oh yeah, couple days ago.”

Five purses his lips and tilts his head, “Didn’t ask if maybe I wanted anything?”

Klaus is honestly thrown by this. “There was nothing to want. Lot of vests, mustache wax - you don’t even have a musta-”

“Should’ve asked,” Five has that look in his eye, the kind that says there’s a whole lot more anger that he’s controlling for Klaus’s sake. “Besides, Luther might have left it all there for a reason, don’t you think?”

Klaus hadn’t really considered that. In the months following the jump back to 2019 this had been Luther’s house still and he hadn’t made any noticeable changes that Klaus had found. The whole thing felt like a museum, not just the storage room. The idea that Luther had kept it that way on purpose hadn’t crossed his mind when he started gutting the place.

“I mean…there’s still other stuff,” Klaus’s chest is starting to feel tight. He hadn’t asked any of the others before tossing things away or selling them, throwing certain things in fireplaces. Who would want it? What was theirs was confined to their rooms, the rest of the house was Reginald’s. He might not haunt the place but his presence is in every nook and cranny.

“Check with me next time, ok?” Five says, voice sharp. In a blink he’s on the other side of the room and through the door.

_They leave the restaurant and pile into the elevator back in 1963. Five stays, Klaus is too drunk and emotionally fucked to care why._

“Maybe the monocle,” Luther says when Klaus asks if maybe he shouldn’t have purged the whole house of most of Reginald’s things and if Luther wanted to keep anything. “But I don’t know where it went.”

“Didn’t realize he felt so strongly about it,” Klaus mumbles. He really hates feeling guilty, it was one of those emotions that tended to go away with the drugs. “I mean this place is a goddamn… _shrine_ to a whole lot of years of bullshit.” He throws his hands up and sighs heavily.

Luther’s watching him as he paces across the library floor; it’s one of the places Klaus hasn’t torn apart all that much. “He was gone from it for a lot of those years though.”

Distance, that’s what it was. Klaus knew Five missed them all during those 45 years he’d been wandering the wasteland and working for the Commission, but missing Reginald Hargreeves? Guess he looked better in memories when all the other ones involved eating cockroaches.

“That’s what happens though,” Luther says, 4 years heavy in his voice, “you spend a lot of time rethinking everything in your life and,” he ducks his head, lets out an unnecessary breath, “you pick it apart.”

And no one’s there to tell you you’re remembering it wrong. He doesn’t say it but Klaus hears it.

Klaus can’t imagine it, can’t even start to wrap his head around it. His life has been full of a lot of noise and movement and bright colors, surrounded by people and more people. Five hadn’t just been stranded in a hellscape, Luther had been isolated thousands of miles away. Five had been pushed to do it by Reginald and Luther had been sent away on purpose. If nothing else Klaus is glad dad only drove him out of the house.

“I named my plant Ben,” Luther says suddenly, finally looking at Klaus, expression bright for the first time since Klaus has seen him on this side of the afterlife. “The one I had with me on the moon. He did really well. Wouldn’t have survived reentry though.” The light in his eyes takes a hit when he says it.

Oh man, if Ben were here he’d be smiling like the fucking sun. “He’d have loooved that,” Klaus says, throwing his head back with the emphasis. Luther’s smile gets wider again. “I guess Five had Dolores. Kind of glad he didn’t name her after any of us.” Luther laughs and Klaus claims victory for the day.

But Luther’s eyes go distant . “Whenever it gets quiet,” he says, “you go back there. Sometimes you wonder if the silence is the only place you belong anymore.”

Luther really was a secret poet, wasn’t he.

_There’s a little bit of reflection time necessary when one has gone through time and lived for months and years in what feels like a whole different world. And stopped two apocalypses. That too. So in the days following their return from 1963 the Hargreeves siblings approach everything like they’re learning to walk again. Except they have to skip walking and go right to running._

_Klaus doesn’t run to the nearest dealer right away. He’d made it for 3 years sober but that little demon his shoulder (which luckily didn’t look like some dead person) was telling him to take that ache in his heart and the emptiness at his back and go back to what worked. Pills worked, weed worked, alcohol worked. He’d love to say his siblings worked, and it’s not that they don’t at all, but a couple of heart to hearts don’t bring back the brother you’d had at your side for 17 years and don’t make the pain of losing the love of your life all over again (and it might have been your fault even though you fucking_ tried _) go away._

_It’s a nice thought but theory and practice are two different things (thanks dad)._

_Diego still has a warrant out for information on Detective Patch and there’s a tense moment where Diego definitely wants to ask Allison to help fix it. But their sister is still too afraid of her powers. She does share some of what had happened in the 60s when she last used them, and Klaus can understand when they get out of control you pretty much want to pretend you don’t have them. But there’s a gun on the bar that Five presents them with a flourish and slowly the whole thing will unwind. It won’t bring back Eurdora though._

_Allison wants to see Claire, she’s single minded about it. “I thought of her every day, I thought I’d never see her again. It’s all I want.” She calls Patrick, she tells him, “just give me 5 minutes” and he does, and then 5 more. No one can blame her when she goes back west 10 days after they come back._

_Vanya wants to try again. She wants to go back to her life and throw all the windows open. Cause she’s not the same and there’s no reason in the world now for her not to be herself. Klaus doesn’t think he’s ever been happier or more proud of her._

_The house becomes Luther’s. Because who else’s would it be? Five, by all rights, is older but no one’s gonna be able to put his name on the deed. But Five does stay, still a whirling ball of excitement and energy – after he sleeps for nearly 3 days straight._

_Klaus finds himself on his bed, half strung out from time to time and it smacks of déjà vu._

“Ooh ooh, the Ramyeon is mine!”

Vanya puts the Styrofoam container into Klaus’s reaching hands and follows it with a packet of silverware.

“Is that spicy?” Diego asks, peering over his shoulder.

“You can’t have any,” Klaus says, pulling the container closer on the coffee table.

“Just a bite.”

“You haven’t even started on yours yet,” Vanya says with a laugh as she settles in a chair across from Klaus.

Five spots Diego eyeing his and pulls his closer too. “No.”

They haven’t been all together like this in weeks. It took Vanya needling them to make it happen. Normal families are like that though, right? Kids grow up and move out and say shit like ‘oh maybe next Wednesday’, ‘I can probably do it Friday’ over and over until they actually just do it. Is this going to be the one way they’re normal?

“How’s your band?” Klaus asks around a mouthful of noodles.

Vanya gives him a look though she’s smiling, “The orchestra you mean? It’s good, I like it. Not so…” she tilts her head, “intense. And,” she twirls her fork in her pad thai, “there’s this girl…”

Klaus whoops, Diego waggles his eyebrows at her.

“That’s good Vanya,” Five says, all grown up. “Glad to hear it.”

“I mean it’s not…” she trails off, the end of that sentence being ‘not Sissy’ but she doesn’t need to say it. “But it’s nice.”

(Sissy lived to 83. She had written letters to Vanya throughout her life, sweet lovely things telling her all about her life and how she and Harlan were and had arranged for them to be delivered at their doorstep that April. Vanya found out that Harlan had only died last year at 68 but from the letters it sounds like he had lived well. Klaus has no letters, no diary, no written word at all except the dog tags around his neck. He won’t pretend that he hadn’t run from Vanya after she’d found them, violent jealousy in every pill he took.)

Vanya tells them about her orchestra and her students – she sounds so much more enthusiastic when she speaks of them now – as they eat. She continues talking about this one seven year old girl, a prodigy, as she pops into the kitchen and returns with beers.

Diego takes one from her and Five takes one but inspects it disapprovingly, puts it on the coffee table and won’t touch it again. Vanya offers one to Klaus and…well, Klaus could. One beer is nothing. One beer is a drop in the ocean of what Klaus knows he is capable of dealing with. But it’s been over two weeks since he’s been sober and he can’t say that it’ll really stick this time, he’s never been confidant in that, but maybe he can keep this streak going for a little bit longer.

“Naw I’m good, thanks Vanny.”

Diego’s eyebrows go up and he gets this proud little smile on his face, looks like how Ben would. Vanya grins at him as she pulls the beer away and tucks it by the leg of her chair.

Five stares him, eyes narrowed only slightly but it still gives away what he’s thinking. Okay. So there’s more than one reason he doesn’t want to drink. They don’t need to talk about it.

Klaus and Five take a taxi back later that night, Five shooting down the idea of him blinking them home. Says it’s too far. (Klaus won’t walk, _a lot_ of people have died in New York.) Klaus heads for the stairs when Five asks, “You’ve talked to him haven’t you?”

Klaus tucks his hair behind his ear. “No,” he says, “Not yet.”

Five looks like he doesn’t believe him.

_Grace tells them, hair in place, skirt starched and perfect, that something’s happened to Luther. She’s a skilled medic, saved Allison before, but she knows there’s nothing to be done ._

_Five stares at the ground. “Dammit,” he says._

Luther’s too broad shoulders sag, somehow he looks tired even as a ghost. “I just…don’t know that I want to know what he thinks of me.”

But he seems like he’s already convinced of how Five feels about it. Klaus doesn’t like to think that maybe it’s one of the reasons.

_People don’t just get fixed. Klaus learned that in multiple rehab centers from a parade of people with degrees that said they knew more than him. If you start out fucked up, or get fucked up, you will always be at least a little fucked up. At the time he wholeheartedly agreed with this, said ‘amen’ to more than one counselor in the middle of their speech, lived every day by day to the creed of ‘I am fucked up and will continue to be, who wants a shot?’_

_He doesn’t tell the groups that he sees ghosts, real conversation stopper that one. The Academy has been out of the spotlight for a while now and not many people outside of a certain age remember. The therapists would probably love it though. He doesn’t just get high because he had a crappy childhood but also talks to dead people, they could write essays about him. He gives them the broad strokes, leaves out the ghosts and the super villains and the whole ‘groomed to save the world’ thing. Dead brother, missing brother, a couple others he never sees. A dad with a monocle who was officially incapable of love. Oh and a chimp. He brings up the chimp just to mess with them._

_But he can’t get fixed. He should be more depressed about this. God, how great would that be? One day wake up and there won’t be all this bullshit in his life, in his head._

_(For some reason whenever he thinks about this, about walking out into the world clean and free, he remembers that song from Luther’s room, floating through the vents. God what was it? Sunny came home and…did_ something _.)_

_It’s not how it works._

“Were you ever scared of him?” Luther asks. Klaus reels a little, can’t say he’d expected that question from Luther.

He looks out over the courtyard, leaning against the gazebo fence. November at night in New York, he’s finally retired all his mesh for the winter. He’s smoking, something he gives into when he’s not sure if he’s about to tip back over into that ocean. But the cigarette and Luther next to him are keeping him upright. 

“Oh yeah,” he says, taps the ash off the end of it. “Long before the mausoleum shit. I mean, he wasn’t really all warm and fuzzy was he? I could never guess what went on in that balding head of his, what he was gonna do next.”

He takes a drag and tips his head back to blow the smoke out into the air. You can’t see stars in New York. He takes a chance, asks, “You?”

After a beat Luther says, “No,” but he doesn’t seem sure of it. “Not for a long time, I think.” He tilts his head and huffs like he’s embarrassed of what he’s going to say next. “Until I realized I had been the whole time and didn’t know that’s what it was.”

Luther hadn’t been dragged into the revelation that dad wasn’t that great, he’d had the floor drop out under him and he’d fallen into a pit of it.

“Didn’t know what he was gonna do next,” he repeats.

Klaus wishes he could pass a cigarette over to him, toss him the lighter. That’s a sight he wouldn’t expect to see (won’t ever see), Luther Hargreeves smoking.

“But he was gonna do it,” Klaus gives a wave of his hand and smoke swirls around him. “Whatever it was.”

Luther is unmoving next to him, eyes on the blank sky. “Like send you to the moon.” His voice gets quieter as he continues, “Or…turn you into a monster. ”

“Yeah. Like that,” Klaus says.

Luther turns to him then, looks like he had when he’d found out about the packages. “But I don’t know who I am without him.”

_Ben died. They were 16. The world of ‘them’, their team, their family, fell apart then in a way that couldn’t get put back together. Klaus knew at the time that it wasn’t any of their faults and in the future will know purely and simply it was their father’s. Three of his siblings knew the same._

_After the funeral Reginald called Luther (Number One, rather) into his office. Klaus never found out what happened in there, but Luther was very quiet for a long time after._

It’s a good thing, it is, it _is_. But it’s also not.

Diego comes over, hands him a framed photograph. “Look what I snagged for you.”

It’s the picture of his squadron from the veteran’s bar. There he is and there’s Dave. He says thank you, thank you so much, but that night he spirals.

There aren’t any ghosts in the house besides Luther but Klaus feels like there’s a dozen hanging off his back, whispering in his ear, begging for his attention. And maybe in that crush, stuck between one soul and the next, is Dave, calling out to him and he can’t hear. Because Dave’s dead isn’t he.

“Hey Luther,” he asks and hears the waver in his own voice. “I think I need a- a break, if that’s alright with you.”

Luther’s brow furrows, “A break?”

“Yeah, ya know, I’ve been very good for a while now and I just need-” he lets out a shaky breath, “a break.”

Realization dawns slowly in Luther’s eyes (he’s more present than ever, no longer coming in hazy). He searches for something to say before he comes up with, “Klaus, don’t you ever want…” but Klaus watches it die in his throat. Klaus wants a lot of things, right now it’s something that’ll make him forget he’s supposed to be fucking emotionally devastated.

And he’s asking his dead brother, the one who killed himself, who only exists when Klaus isn’t blitzed, for permission to make him go away for a while. Hey Luther, you’re one of the reasons I feel like this. He wouldn’t ever fucking say that though.

“But you’ll come back?” Luther asks. Yes yes, of course he’ll come back and Luther can come back-. “You’ll be safe?”

Oh. “Yeah, I’ll be fine,” Klaus gives a smile that probably isn’t as convincing as he wants it to be. “Aren’t I always?”

Luther looks a little helpless. “No?”

_They all drink when they get back to their own time and not a person in the universe is allowed to blame them. What else would anyone do? They sprawl out in the great room, dropped like puppets with their strings cut. Five’s asleep in an armchair. They talk, sort of. ‘That was crazy when-‘, ‘Hey how did you do that-‘, ‘Did you actually like working on a farm Vanya?’ Someone says something funny occasionally. Klaus’s limbs feel like lead keeping him weighted down to the sofa. When his head stops spinning from the time travel the alcohol makes up the difference._

_Klaus looks out across his siblings dotted throughout the room and thinks ‘I know them now’ and he smiles but the thought pings something in the back of his mind. Does he? He looks at Five, who he hasn’t seen since he was 13, and then for only what technically amounts to a week and change since he’s been back._

_Oh great, he’s turning into a morbid drunk. They have time now though, right? Dad did a great job of pushing them apart till they scattered like Jenga pieces but hey, that apocalypse did bring them together in the end. Dear old dad, smart guy._

_‘…there was no mistaking dad’s intentions of building us up as a team while breaking us down as separate people.’ Vanya had written that._

_Luther gently picks Five up out of the chair without waking him and carries him to his room._

‘Fun’ is not necessarily the word Klaus would use when he pops the first pill after two plus weeks sober. It’s like the party stayed raging and he’d just gone outside for a smoke. He fits so easily back into this world, one high to another, another bed, another club or bar or warehouse rave. Welcome back Klaus, where you been? Oh, just trying to cope with a whole lot of shit no one could possibly understand, cleaning the house, talking to my dead brother and lying about it to my other brother. You know, the usual.

It’s easy, that’s what it is. So easy to just walk back in the doorway and slip on the skin of someone who didn’t even try in the first place instead of not enough. Still a freak with a fucked up past and a messed up present, but one that doesn’t care as damn much.

And here’s the house again, always with this damn house. He could sleep at a shelter, he’s a regular of a couple of them. But this is easier.

Five is…present. Klaus thinks. He does feel a little bad about that. He slips in at odd hours, tries very hard to be quiet. His brother has seen him strung out, in their first version of 2019 and in stretches during their time in the second, but he just needs a little bit, okay? Just a couple of days. He doesn’t want Five giving him that disapproving look when he stumbles through the door (he doesn’t look like dad when he does it, but he looks enough like an authority figure that it reminds Klaus of him all the same).

Five days. He wants five days. (The number is arbitrary, he swears)

_“Are you…fuck Klaus, are you high?” Diego asks, grabbing his chin and looking at his eyes._

_Yes. “No, no. A little buzzed is all.” He has no control over the dilation of his pupils but he’s gonna pretend he does._

_Diego gives an aggravated sigh. “You’re gonna stay clean this time. You survived an apocalypse, you can quit fucking dosing.”_

_‘Dosing’, ha cute. “Absolutely, of course,” Klaus assures. Diego is a good brother. The voice of reason in his head that isn’t actually Ben wishes he could just tell him the truth. He is wired wrong, his coping methods are not good. He can’t be fixed just like that. You have to want to change. Yeah, that one too. ‘You have to want to change.’ Another platitude tossed out in group sessions._

_They are better, as a family they are so much better. Before dad died they hadn’t seen each other in so many years, they’d become different people or at least made very convincing armor stacked on top of the child versions of themselves. And now they have dinners and meet for coffee and see Vanya play with her orchestra in the little community theater. They have a mini party to celebrate Diego officially being labeled ‘not a murderer’. They talk to Allison on video chat as she shows off her new place with a room for Claire. They_ do _talk._

_But Klaus still sees shadows and murder victims and walking dead bodies begging for his attention. He’s still lost Ben, Dave. Diego can bend bullets and sling knives, Klaus wishes he had it so easy. (He’s not mad at Diego, that’d be stupid, but he wishes if he had to be saddled with a superpower that’s a pretty simple one compared to the one he’s stuck with.)_

_Normal. They’re a better family but there still has to be a normal. Not like they’re gonna get the band back together and fight super villains, there hasn’t been a real one of those since they took down Perseus. Diego, Allison, Vanya – they have versions of normal that work. But 3 of the 6 don’t have a working normal._

_Klaus reels back and forth between sober and out of his mind, bouncing around from the mansion to the couches of his brother and sister and whatever roof over his head he can find. Five lives in the house but he’s still in the body of a 13 soon-to-be 14 year old, still has years of fire and brimstone and assassinations bouncing around in his head. Sometimes he’ll be there when Klaus crashes on Vanya’s sofa. They were close before, nice for them to be close again._

_And Luther..._

_“Klaus you know you can stay here, we can look after you,” Luther says behind Diego’s shoulder. Says it like a true leader. Thanks Luther, Klaus doesn’t say, that’s comforting._

_But otherwise Klaus isn’t sure what Luther does when none of them are there to look after_ him _._

“Wake the fuck up, would you?” Five’s sharp voice cuts through the fog in Klaus’s brain and he blinks awake to the worst blade of sunshine coming in through the window into his eyes.

“God Fivey, good morning to you too,” he’s not actually sure it is morning. He’s on his couch again so at least he found a way home and someplace suitably horizontal to pass out on.

Fivey’s standing over him, arms crossed over his chest, looking down with exactly that look. “It’s 3PM.”

Alright so he was wrong. Klaus shakes his head, sure the fog floats out his ears as he does it. “So you’re saying I missed lunch.” But still early for dinner.

Five rolls his eyes and tosses his head, whole expression pinched. “Okay I’ll bite, what in particular inspired this new bout of,” he waves his hand in the air, “excess.”

Lots of answers to that question Fivey. Klaus figures he’ll go with the first one on the list. “The picture.” He rubs his eyes.

“Picture?”

He pats the couch for it then remembers no, it’s in his room and not even close to here. “Picture of me and Dave.”

Five purses his lips but the irritation in his expression drops down a notch. He knows about Dave for the most part. Klaus told him, told all of them at different times, about him. About the beautiful, shyly charming, loving man that was Dave Katz.

“Hmm,” Five hums. He watches Klaus sit up and stretch, rub his hands over his face. “Anything else?”

Klaus gives him a dopey smile, he’s still floating a little. “In order of severity?”

Five’s hands move to his hips and the way he stands up so solid and straight makes Klaus feel very very young in comparison despite his brother’s baby face. “I know how it works Klaus, I know you do this so you can’t see them.”

He hadn’t even had to tell Five that, he’d figured that out on his own. Or else Klaus just made it really obvious. “They can be a very noisy bunch.”

This apparently is not a satisfying answer. Five lets out a harsh breath through his nose. Through the mist Klaus almost wants to be annoyed. Five’s mad, what’s new? “What day is it?” he asks.

Five’s expression turns back to pissy then but there’s still a hint of concern hiding under there. “Friday.”

Ah shit. He’d said five days. It’s been eight.

“You _should_ eat,” Five says, turning away but only to pace over towards the doorway and stop and look back. “We can have Grace get started on something early.”

_‘Do you want me to wake Grace? She can make you some dinner…’_

“That would be amazing,” Klaus says, he can’t remember when he ate last. “Coffee?”

Five gives his a considering wag of his head, as if he didn’t basically inject the stuff into his blood. “I could go for some.”

Klaus takes a little bit to get off the couch, failing on his first try as his head goes spinning, before he follows Five down to the kitchen.

_Klaus doesn’t know Luther Hargreeves. Not really._

_He knows a boy who seems so confident and in charge that Klaus doesn’t worry as much as he probably should. Knows one who listens to music so low at all hours of the night Klaus can only hear it because their rooms share an air duct. The boy who counts off numbers like names and looks him in the eye to make sure he’s okay. Who wanted to go to space even when he was told it was ridiculous. Knows a boy who thought Reginald Hargreeves had all the answers, knew what he was doing, cared about them more than just a means to an end that he’d never tell them about. He knows a boy who walked out of their father’s office after his brother’s death and stayed very quiet and very solemn for all the months Klaus saw before he ran away from that house._

_Luther comes back into his life somehow the same and yet not the same at all. He looks different, it’s the most obvious thing. He sounds the same except there’s a thread of insecurity in his voice. He speaks the same only the words don’t come out the way he wants them to. He wants the same things but those things don’t exist anymore. He thinks the same until his whole world shatters around him._

_In the brief moments Klaus has with him before being dropped in the1960s his brother surprises him. He sees him break apart more in those minutes than he’d ever seen before then. Klaus tries then too even though he isn’t really the best person to break apart in front of._

_He doesn’t see much of Luther in 1963, but his head’s falling off his shoulders, love of his life lost again, at that point._

_Luther Hargreeves feels far away. He feels like a satellite orbiting everything (Klaus is proud of this metaphor). He is there and yet not in a way that’s too confusing for Klaus to dig into when he has his own dirt to shovel. They’d passed the point where they could relate to each other a long time ago, Klaus really doesn’t think he should be the person among them to try._

_Diego has so much more going on than even he thought (he stands at the edge of the cemetery for Euroda’s funeral, comes home and drinks with Klaus). Allison has a whole world she’s made for herself and after so long away she wants it back with a passion, and no one would even think to hinder her. Vanya takes over the life she’d left behind except now with the determination to make it something she loves and not just something she tolerates. They all still speak with and check in with Luther, but not all the time._

_Five and Luther is a strange combination that Klaus registers in his hindbrain, in that part that works away in the background behind all the drugs. From what he can tell they’d spent a decent amount of time together in the scant two weeks Five had been with them before the jump back, but something…shifts when they come back to the academy mansion. If Klaus had to put it in words, in that way that someone who can see sounds might, Five is all energy and light, and Luther recedes. He’s not in the house all the time so he doesn’t know how they are with each other alone, but there’s an off kilter tilt to it where at times they seem the closest of all of them and others where they might as well be strangers._

_Klaus doesn’t know what Luther does in those hours and days and sometimes weeks where he doesn’t see him. He could imagine all kinds of things only he doesn’t actually imagine anything, because he doesn’t know where Luther fits in to it all. He doesn’t know where Five fits in either but Five’s going to take up as much space as he damn well wants. How did he get louder than their Number One?_

_Luther is more sensitive than he lets on, feels bruises and cuts deeper than the rest of them, it’s in this way that Klaus should feel a kinship. The great swanning spectacle of the academy and the one who wrote poems that he only showed to one person who didn’t give a damn._

_The mansion is a museum, is a monument to Reginald Fucking Hargreeves’s Grand Experiment, is a haunted house even without the ghosts. It’s quiet without all of them, was quiet even with. ‘I want to come home,’ Luther had written in a letter he’d sent back 200,000 miles, but when he got home it was still quiet._

_To Klaus Luther Hargreeves feels far away even sitting next to him._

It doesn’t take as long for Klaus to get sober this time, partially because it had only been a week and partially because he’s got Five hounding him like a drill sergeant. Nothing clears the head like a teenager in short pants popping into your room at 7AM talking at least 3 decibels louder than necessary. And Five does stick around this time, he doesn’t disappear for days at a time, working on some agenda that Klaus probably won’t ever understand. He sits and eats meals with him and they ask Grace to tell them stupid stories of them growing up. (Klaus had forgotten the time Diego had dared Ben to call Pogo a ‘monkey’ but chickened out at the last second and said ‘manatee’. The completely bewildered look on Pogo’s face was priceless. Five laughs when he hears it, unrestrained and near giddy and it only makes Klaus laugh until they end up in a feedback loop til they can’t catch their breath.)

Five wakes him up, makes him listen while he goes over formulas and equations, makes him eat, throws books at him in the library telling him he really should goddamn read and regenerate some of those brain cells he’s burned away. Klaus stays flippant and jokes through it all but underneath he appreciates it in a way he doesn’t know how to say to him.

_Klaus and Luther continue walking the gallery of a hallway, looking at all the paintings of the past, going backward in time and watching the siblings show back up. Luther stops at one, the last one with Five in it._

_“He would have been a good leader,” Luther says. “A great leader. Probably better than me.” He’s smiling as he says it but the same regret that was in his eyes at 13 is shining there again._

It takes 4 days but when Klaus finds Luther he lets out a sigh of relief. The thought had been lurking around in the back of his mind since he’d ‘taken a break’ almost 2 weeks ago that maybe he’d just leave. That he’d walk into the light, or simply decide he didn’t want to wait around anymore.

(He doesn’t know why Luther hasn’t done the whole ‘walk into the light’ thing yet. Ben hadn’t because he was scared, because he wasn’t ready to leave his family. Luther might be scared, but Klaus isn’t sure he’s ready to ask yet.)

“You okay?” Luther asks.

Klaus tilts this head, shakes his hand in the air a bit. “Eh, call it a 7 out of 10.” Klaus figures that sounds about right.

Luther gives this an approving nod, “That’s not bad.”

Ha, that’s miraculous as far as Klaus is concerned. Then again he guesses he’s an expert on pinging back and forth around sobriety like a pinball machine.

He kind of wants to ask Luther what he’s been up to but he knows the answer already. He knows Luther hasn’t been out strolling around New York, walking through museums after hours, standing in the back of bars listening to bands and in-house musicians at coffee shops. Klaus hadn’t believed it at first, when they all started to really talk to each other, that Luther had indeed been that secluded from the world. That he continued to be. 

“Five’s keeping you in line?”

“Oh you’ve been watching?” It’s oddly reassuring to hear. “Think he has a career as a life coach. Everyone would be too afraid not to do what he says.”

Luther chuckles. He’s fully present now, solid for as solid is for a ghost; Klaus tries not to let it remind him of Ben too much. “I think he was the only one dad ever listened to.”

That had been true. Even back then there was something in Five that demanded people listened when he spoke. He was the only one who dared to argue with dad in the first place, nevermind that he was shot down it was the fact that he did it at all. The rest of them wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing. Allison came close, especially as she got older, but Five was the only one who seemed to keep Reginald on his toes.

“I am thinking, by the way,” Klaus says, fluttering the kimono he’s got draped over his shoulders, “of turning the dining room into a ballroom where I can host parties and raves, maybe an orgy or two.”

Luther’s face scrunches up, starts to look distressed but Klaus interrupts.

“You don’t have to attend you just need to help me pick the music.” He’s had time to rethink tearing the house apart without his siblings’ permission. He’ll still do what he’s planning, of course, but he’ll at least mention it in passing.

Luther’s face brightens again, he looks intrigued, “I think I could do that.” His eyes light up as he thinks. “You know Talking Heads right? Oh and the Go-go’s…”

Klaus grins. God, dad would hate it.

“Now I’ll keep the chandelier but I’m thinking I can probably hang a disco ball _from_ the chandelier-”

“What are you going on about?” For probably the 50th time in a month Five pops up out of nowhere and gives Klaus palpitations; he squawks in a very undignified manner not befitting the elegance of this kimono he’s wearing.

“Oh just continuing in my quest to turn this place into something less ‘school of the damned’ feeling,” Klaus is very good at hiding when he’s flustered. Off of Five’s look: “I will check in with you, cross my heart.” He makes the motions just to sell it.

Five is pacified for now. He walks around the couches, glances at the portrait of himself that still sits on the wall in the great room. He hasn’t said a word about it. He cuts his eyes to Klaus, voice arch when he asks, “Who were you talking to?”

Okay so Klaus isn’t _perfect_ at hiding when he’s flustered. He gives a quick side eye to where Luther was- actually, where Luther _is_. This is the first time since Klaus has been conjuring him that Luther’s stuck around when someone else is in the room. He shakes his head at Klaus, looking so desperate Klaus’s heart sinks.

“Oh you know,” Klaus says, perching on an arm of the couch. “Just one of Vanya’s old nannies, there’s a couple of them floating around here.”

Five gives him that look again, the one that says he’s not sure if Klaus is lying or not but maybe if he glares just right Klaus will give up the ghost – literally in this case.

“You’re saying he hasn’t been here at all?”

Klaus considers playing stupid – he’s pretty good at it – ask if he’s talking about dad or Ben or Pogo or hell the mailman they had growing up that suddenly dropped dead of an aneurysm at 57. Problem with playing stupid is it’s hard to do with someone as smart as Five. But Klaus can still lie.

“Hasn’t answered me at least,” he says like he’s genuinely disappointed. “But not everyone sticks around. Some skip the whole ‘stalking Klaus’ thing.” He gives a nonchalant shrug.

Five looks to the ground but Klaus still catches the conflicted look on his face. Klaus takes a chance to glance Luther’s way again and his eyes are fixed on Five, he looks sad, almost afraid. When Five looks back up there’s that placid smile he wears in place of showing what he’s really feeling

“Figures,” he says coldly.

This strikes Klaus like a dart in the chest. He feels his face twist in confusion. “It does?”

Five tucks his hands in his pockets (he does indeed have new clothes but for some unexplained reason he still always comes back to the uniform), the smile becoming pinched. “Couldn’t hack it in the real world, makes sense he wouldn’t in the afterlife.”

Klaus reels back from this. He’s never heard Five talk about Luther like this, about any of them like this. Five will threaten their lives, sure, but he’s never been, well, cruel.

“‘Hack it’ implies a lot there Fivey-”

“No, ‘hack it’,” Five affirms staunchly, “as in stick the fuck around for a goddamn minute. As in he didn’t even try.”

Oh wow, Klaus is not ready for this. His chest feels hollow, like his body can’t figure out what emotion to fill it with. Luther looks like, fuck, he looks heartbroken. Why’s he still here? He can just poof out of here if he wanted, Klaus wishes he would.

“You know that’s not really fair,” Klaus says, keeping his voice as mellow as he can, “we don’t know-”

“Don’t we?” Five hisses and he’s taking a couple steps towards Klaus and Klaus is reminded this little man in a 14 year old body is actually very dangerous. Not that he’s afraid for himself, but Five’s bad side is quite bad.

“Five months, that’s all he gave it,” Five continues, voice taking up all the empty space in the large room, gesturing wildly as he talks, “We came back and he only made it five months. All the rest of us are still here, we’re all still trying. But no, he decides he’s gonna throw in the towel early.”

Luther’s face is completely blank now. He’s moved to the side, watching Five like he’s on a stage or something. _Leave, dammit,_ Klaus thinks at him.

Klaus scrambles for something to say. This is not his scene, he should not be in charge of this. Where’s Vanya? Diego? Hell, he’ll call Allison. He is not the family counsel, he is the opposite of that. He grabs at straws, “We all handle-”

But Five cuts him off again, face red, voice rising. “I made it over _40 years_ in the goddamn wasteland by myself trying to get back here. Just for you guys. I watched him die _3 times_ and did everything I could to stop it!” His voice is strained when he says, “And then he goes and does it himself.”

Luther’s moved to the back of the room, his back to them. Klaus opens and closes his mouth on a whole lot of nothing to say.

Five watches him for a moment and then huffs, apparently upset that he hasn’t gotten the right response (not fair Fivey…), balls his hands into fists, “I could do it, why couldn’t he?”

Klaus is dumbfounded and this is apparently really not what Five wants. He doesn’t even jump, he just starts towards the door with rage in his steps and Klaus’s mind reels – _‘Hey, wait…wait-’_

“Wait!” He’s shouting before he’s even realizing he’s doing it. He’s suddenly on his feet, taking a step towards Five who’s stopped in his tracks, looking caught off guard.

“You can’t say that!” Klaus has no idea where he’s going with this but his heart’s jumped up into his throat and whatever it wants to say right now it’s going to. “He’s not you!”

Five looks lost, both by the statement and that Klaus actually seems mad. Klaus is just as surprised, trust him.

“You can’t…fuck, he’s not you. You can’t say what he can’t do,” he says, not shouting but no less insistent, “What he couldn’t do. That’s not how it works. He’s not you, you don’t have the same fucking brain. The chemicals…fuck, the chemicals don’t work right,” he clenches his hands in the air, God he hopes he’s making even a little bit of sense, “He doesn’t feel things like you do, _I_ don’t feel things like you do. We all just have stupid, fucked up brains and they’re all fucked up in different ways.”

Five still looks thrown, and God, come on please just understand what he’s getting at.

“I mean,” he gives a weak laugh that’s more for him than anyone else, “look at me. I’m always…I’m always gonna be fucked up. Luther…” he can feel the words getting caught behind his teeth, he pushes through it, “Luther was fucked up too and we didn’t know. And he didn’t know. You don’t get to say he just _felt_ it wrong.” He drops his hands, feels the intensity drain out of him when he looks at Five’s face and doesn’t see the realization he wishes he did. He gives a weak shrug, says, “You can’t…fix people. Not really.”

Five is silent for a minute, and Klaus thinks he’s about to explode. His face is redder, fists clenched and mouth a tight line. He looks like a there’s a timer ticking towards zero and Klaus is in the wrong place right now.

But no, that’s not how it’s going to work this time. Five is always so goddamn angry. He’s been angry since the first minute he’d landed back in 2019 and the energy generated by his temper seems to be the thing that keeps him going. Klaus has been sad and flighty and high and detached, he’s been keeping afloat by all the emotions that aren’t anger and fuck it, it’s his turn. He’s fucking angry too and he wishes there was a better explanation but there isn’t except all those stupid little platitudes that end up being truer than he wishes they were. It’s simple and it’s not and Five’s been managing so long under absolutes – save the world, fight The Commission, get everyone back – that he can’t see that that’s just not how it works.

But then the dam breaks. Five still looks like he’s about to bust a blood vessel but his eyes are wet. He holds up his hand, one finger pointed at Klaus like there’s something he wants to say but whatever it is never comes. And then he’s crying, tears rolling down his cheeks and the next noise he makes is a badly held back sob.

“He wasn’t- we were going to-” Five is stuttering out between shaky breaths. He drops his hand and all the fight goes out of him. “He never said anything,” he says miserably.

Klaus thinks Five’s never looked so damn young. It’s easy to forget just looking at him that he’s really 59 years old under the body he’s been forced into but he tries his damnedest to remind them as often as he can. Right now he looks like a lost kid who just wants answers that don’t exist. And that’s fair, Klaus supposes, he had a lot of those years stolen from him. But, then again, he figures Luther did too.

Klaus doesn’t think twice before he’s reaching out for Five, pulling him into a hug. Five leans into it right away, falls against him like it’s something he’s been waiting for and Klaus is both happy he’s here to help and sad that it has to happen at all.

Five isn’t a demonstrative crier, he leans his head against Klaus’s chest and breathes heavily but he doesn’t weep and wail. His shoulders shake and his arms go slack and he lets out a sniffle every once and a while. All Klaus can do is keep his arms around his shoulders and let him get it out. Probably the first time he’s let go in who knows how long. Klaus tries to whisper nice things, makes shushing noises like he guesses he should. He still thinks he isn’t the right person for this job and Five probably deserves better, but he keeps him on his feet.

When Klaus looks over to the far side of the room Luther’s ghost is sitting in a chair with his head in his hands. Klaus blinks and he’s gone.

_(Luther Hargreeves doesn’t know who he is._

_He wants to be the perfect leader, wants to be the best Number One, wants to be the best son. He’s been put in charge and he takes it seriously. He must be good enough, otherwise why would dad do it?_

_He tries so hard. He doesn’t always get along with his siblings but that’s normal right? Not that he knows what normal is. This is his normal and he only knows it’s not the same as everyone else because of the books and magazines and newspapers they read. But he’s trying. He and Diego fight, but Diego’s just jealous, he just wants dad to think he’s just as good as Luther. He’s not, but that’s okay, if you have a Number One you have to have Number Two. Why can’t Diego just get over it?_

_He loves Allison but he doesn’t understand how. She’s smart and pretty and treats him better than the others, so he must love her like people do in stories. She thinks the same so he’s sure he’s got it right. He likes that she laughs when he tells her some joke that he knows she’ll find funny, that she’ll roll her eyes at Diego and catch his gaze and they’ll share a smile, that she actually knows him as more than just Number One. He doesn’t understand why everyone else teases them about it._

_He tells himself he needs to try harder with Klaus, with Ben, and Five. They’re…weird, and he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do so he comes off as arrogant and bossy. They’re soft, and he’s not soft. He’s the team leader. And Vanya is so confusing. She’s not part of the team, but she’s his sister. He doesn’t know where the Academy ends and his family begins._

_Five leaves, Luther doesn’t know where. He wishes he could walk the streets calling his name (like he does at the end of a fight; it’s his job to keep everyone accounted for, keep everyone alive) but dad won’t let him. He has too much training to do, too many responsibilities. He doesn’t realize how much he liked Five until he’s gone, and after that he misses him every day._

_Then Ben dies. He didn’t know he could feel so bad. He finds a whole new layer of hurt he couldn’t imagine even when Five went missing. Dad says someone should have sacrificed themselves and there’s no mistaking he meant him. He’s the leader, he’s in charge, he’s supposed to keep everyone safe. And he failed. Dad calls him into his office and tells him so._

_Diego leaves first, not surprising. He curses dad out as he goes; 17 years old and full of hatred and aggression. If only he’d followed Luther’s example. Vanya’s next and she goes as quietly as she lived. No one tells him she’s gone until a day later and he says, “Oh” and feels an ache in his chest he wasn’t expecting. Then Allison. That one hurts in a brand new way and he should be cataloging these. She tells him she’ll think of him, that she’ll be so happy when he joins her in Hollywood and they can create new lives for themselves. But Luther’s needed here. He watches her get in a taxi and he feels like she’s taking his heart with her._

_Klaus leaves but keeps coming back. Klaus’s power is confusing to Luther. It’s not easy and Luther doesn’t know where he fits in most of the time. When he starts popping pills and smoking pot and sneaking out and coming back slurring his words and tripping over his feet Luther feels like it’s him who’s done something wrong. Number Four should not be acting like this. But Klaus does come back often, even if it’s only for a night. This is how Luther gets a better look at his room, at all the words scrawled across the walls, all the voices of the dead he never realized Klaus heard all the time. He checks in on Klaus and the Sharpie marks remind him of the endless string of numbers in Five’s room._

_But eventually Klaus leaves for good. And then it’s quiet._

_The house is so large that even the smallest rooms seem to echo. Or maybe he’s imagining it. Grace goes through and dusts down every bedroom on Thursdays and sometimes Luther will check in on them, as if he’s making sure she’s done a good job. Of course she has, but it’s as good an excuse he’s got to make sure they’re empty._

_He does everything like he’s supposed to. Train, exercise, study, train again. He goes on the missions dad sends him on and doesn’t ever bring up how he might be scared and maybe he shouldn’t be doing this alone. But it always works out, so he must be doing something right, right? Dad seems…satisfied at least._

_He’s not prepared for the chemical factory explosion, doesn’t know that it’ll eat through his skin and muscles and burn like he’s dying. He’s supposed to be invincible, he can withstand anything, he’s strong. But then he’s not, and it’s going dark, and he knows he’s failed._

_He wakes up a monster. He wakes up and knows that who he is wasn’t ever under his control. But it must be for the best._

_He tries again. He’s a freak and he’s hideous so he hides away but there has to be something he can do right. He sees less of his father. He keeps training, and exercising, studying; he’s still Luther he is (he_ is _) even underneath the ugliness. And when Reginald tells him he’s going to the moon he’s elated. He’s happier than he’s been in so long. This is what he wanted, this is what he’s prepared for, worked for. He’s good enough for this._

_A year in he pulls off a whole chunk of skin and muscle from his arm – he must be there underneath it, the real him, the real Luther; he’s just hidden beneath this gross façade, this fake shell he’s wearing – and he’s sure he’s going to bleed out. He doesn’t have enough surgical thread to tie it up (dad won’t send more) and it’s dripping on the floor of his capsule like constellations. Maybe it’s ok. Maybe this is where it’s supposed to end. But he wakes up hours and hours later and he’s alive. So he continues with his mission._

_He doesn’t think he’s very good but he keeps writing poems anyway. Keeps tearing at his skin because sometimes his mind tells him to keep trying, that he’s really there underneath he just needs to try harder. He sends a handful of his writings to Earth but most of them end up in the furnace that’s supposed to keep him warm. He’s hungry, and he’s cold. He names his plant Ben._

_Dad dies. He’s numb. He’s alone. Until suddenly he’s not and 5 of siblings burst back into his life like fireworks. They’re all the same as they were and in a way it’s comforting. But they don’t listen to him and he feels like a joke. He fucks up and makes everything worse. He finds the letters he wrote under a floorboard._

_He lands in 1962 of all places and it’s very easy to step back into a version of who he was before. He doesn’t like the name ‘King Kong’ but he wasn’t the one who came up with it. He doesn’t like fighting for his supper but he knows this is where he’s useful, this is where he fits as best he can. He pushes Five off because that’s what makes sense but a part of him wants to give up and accept he’s always been the leader Luther never was._

_And surprisingly, everything is…well, not terrible. He and Diego get along, which is new. Allison is married and happy and he means it when he says he’s happy for her. She’s not alone and that’s what matters. He knows what alone feels like, knows it like a gnawing pain in his stomach and he doesn’t want that for her. Vanya doesn’t know him but that actually makes it easier to say what he wants to say to her, to tell her he really meant only the best, that he was trying his best._

_They save the day, again. And that feels good, it really does. He feels like a hero again, feels like he’s part of something again. A voice in his head tells him that dad was right, wasn’t he? He’d prepared everything that lead up to this…so he must have known what he was doing? He must have cared if it meant the fate of the world was at stake. (When he visits Reginald in 1962 it feels like a knife in his heart even though he knows he’s too strong to be stabbed like that. But it all works out, so it must be worth it. He just wants everything to be worth it. Please.)_

_And then he’s back in 2019. He’s back on Earth and his dad is gone and Pogo’s gone but his brothers and sisters are all here. The house is still here – actually the house is his. Of course it is. It’s…exactly what he wanted._

_They have lives. Vanya, Diego, Allison. Allison leaves after 10 days home. It’s alright, it’s good. Klaus spirals off into his own head like always and Luther feels weak. He tells Klaus he’ll help, but he doesn’t know how and Klaus doesn’t seem to want it. Five is…Five is everything Luther plays at but isn’t. He’s commanding and smart and quick and Luther is only reminded of all the ways Five missed out, that maybe Luther had only been saving his place for him but he just never came back for it._

_He talks with his family regularly. They have dinners and call each other and occasionally they stop by for a drink or to make small talk. Luther has found out that a couple of drinks makes his head feel light and everything feel easy. Five is usually home. He still flits around like a hummingbird trying to figure out this equation or that problem and Luther finds it endearing. Five talks to him but it’s like he’s parceling out specific things, safe things, so he can keep the really bad stuff to himself. Luther hints that he’s ok with Five sharing all the really bad stuff, but Five’s head is under lock and key. Luther worries about Klaus. He still doesn’t know how to help and it makes him feel like he’s failing again._

_But there’s still warmth and happiness and kinship between them and Luther understands these people better than he ever did and it’s gratifying and he wants the best for all of them. He hopes they all get what they want._

_But he still feels empty._

_The house is his and it feels like a tomb. He feels like Reginald is going to be lurking around every corner, telling him he’s supposed to be better than this. He looks at stairwells and bedrooms and kitchens and sees a troop of 7 children who depend on one man who doesn’t know how to love them. They are weapons that he is building up to use. How had Luther missed that? How had he not seen? He was Number One. Maybe if he’d realized sooner, maybe if he’d spoken up or stepped in, maybe if he’d actually done something. He was the leader, wasn’t he?_

_His siblings are strong people – yes even Klaus. They know who they are. They have identities they’ve chosen for themselves. Luther doesn’t have that. He’s been built up (and torn down) by Reginald Hargreeves except he’s not here anymore and Luther is…nothing. Maybe once upon a time he’d thought of a different future for himself, of some other way he’d like to be living, but now he can’t think of anything but Number One, he’s supposed to be Number One._

_Some nights when Five’s at Vanya’s or wherever and Klaus is who knows where, he drinks himself stupid and thinks of how he stole Ben’s future. Klaus doesn’t talk about him often but he shouldn’t have to. He shouldn’t have been a ghost in the first place._

_He sees his brothers and sisters less and less. Even Five though he lives here (he wants to help but Five is so wrapped up in his own head and Luther knows how hard it is to be alone, to be the only person you can depend on, and he doesn’t want to interrupt). Luther has no place, no identity outside of this house, outside of the Academy. The portrait of Reginald above the fireplace stares at him, judging him._

_He’s not on the moon. He is in his own house in his own room. He has siblings who are trying to love him. Him, the freak, the monster. The one too stupid to leave, who stayed despite all the signals and warning signs. The one who still wasn’t good enough. And he tells himself:_

_You are a number, you are not a name. You can be shaped and manipulated. You can be broken and remade as a monster against your will. You can be sent away. You can come home and still feel like you’re a million miles from anyone._

_It’s an idle thought until it isn’t. It’s just an idea until it’s more. It’s just a gun until it’s in his hand. See you soon dad.)_

The house feels hollow as Klaus walks through it, somehow more than usual, which is saying something. He doesn’t call Luther’s name cause he knows if he’s here somewhere he’ll let himself be found. But he’s not anywhere.

Klaus hasn’t seen him since Five’s breakdown and he can’t really blame him. Can’t blame either of them. There’s literally nothing about what’s happened – any of it – that can be taken lightly. This family is a therapist with a book deal’s wet dream.

“Hello sweetheart,” Grace chirps as Klaus comes across her in the kitchen, “I’ve started dinner, but I can make you a sandwich if you’re hungry now.”

“No thanks mom, I’m okay,” Klaus tells her. She’d been the reason he’d stayed in the first place, sort of. She had nowhere else to go and Five was too “young” to put his name on the fun legal shit so Klaus had stepped up, for the first time in his life. And now he has a mansion. That he saved for a robot.

Mom’s not a robot, shut up. She loves them, she does.

“Alright honey,” Grace says with a beatific smile painted 50’s red. “Cornish hen tonight!”

Klaus fucking loves Cornish hen.

It’ll be a while before it’s ready and there’s a whole second floor he hasn’t checked today. He opens Reginald’s door just for the satisfaction of seeing it empty. He’s gotten rid of a handful more stuff and Five’s been more agreeable about it lately. He’s half mentioned it to Vanya and Diego, and Allison via video chat but none of them seem to be too attached to any of it. So to the pawn shop it goes.

He walks down the hallway of bedroom doors. Five’s is open and he’s in there at his desk scribbling on something Klaus thinks is a set of washing machine instructions. He is going to use his ill gotten pawn shop gains to buy that boy some notebooks next time he’s out. He doesn’t even look up as Klaus passes by and Klaus figures let him throw himself into what he can; Klaus wishes he had equations instead of Ecstasy some days.

He visits Ben’s room, which he finds himself doing occasionally these days. It still feels like walking into a sweater, inviting and warm. He’s considered reading some of the books on the shelves; if Five’s gonna make him read then well Ben had better taste than Reggie, for the most part anyway. He hasn’t done it yet but Klaus has started a modest pile at the foot of the bed.

Luther’s doorway is still shut. Has been since two days after. Klaus hesitates outside of it, feels like he’d walk into a void if he opened it. But that’s a shitty thing to think and he feels so bad about it that it compels him to turn the doorknob and throw it open with as much drama as he can manage sober.

It’s just a room. Luther’s room. No void. There’s models hanging from the ceiling, a diorama a of the solar system from when they were 11 on the dresser, the bed still made perfectly (they’ve told Grace to skip this room for now so this was purely Luther’s doing). And there’s a bureau full of records with a record player perfectly centered on top.

Actually there’s more than that. 5 plastic milk crates sit to the side stuffed with even more records. Klaus bends over and considers them for a moment. Nothing catches his eye immediately except that wow, he really has Luther’s taste pegged as he catches sight of a Eurythmics label. He tugs it out and holds it carefully in his hands. Perfect condition, of course. The one time Ben had ever really upset any of them was the time he’d been too rough with a record (he wishes he remembered which one, wishes he could just ask him) and broke it and Luther looked absolutely crushed. Ben had apologized profusely and Luther had of course forgiven him because it was hard to stay mad at Ben, but Klaus still remembers how he hadn’t even been mad, he’d gone straight to depressed. Now that he’s older Klaus sees it for what it is – they were all afraid to lose any little bit of themselves they could grab. Luther’s was records.

Klaus eyes the record player, considers the disc in his hand. He’s sober so he’s pretty sure he could do this without scratching it, and he hasn’t heard this album in forever. Not since he stopped listening to his vent.

Very very carefully he takes it out of its sleeve and drops it on the player and very very carefully moves the needle over and switches it on. It’s a complete success. There’s the familiar synth beat and then the drums and vocals kick in and suddenly he feels like he’s 15 again. He starts to sway a little bit with it because it’s a good song and absolutely deserves at least a little bit of dancing.

Five doesn’t surprise him this time only because Klaus is looking towards the door. Oh damn, he’d been the one to snatch that album out of his hand however many months ago hadn’t he? He prepares himself for him to get snippy again.

But Five only tilts his head and listens a bit, hands in the pocket of the jeans he’s finally wearing. “I don’t remember this one.”

Klaus waves a hand at him, “Oh you’re too young to know it.”

He gets a narrowing of eyes and a sardonic smile in return.

Far off there’s the sound of a door shutting and a voice calling up the staircase. “Klaus? Five? I brought sandwiches, you guys hungry?”

Five pops away and Klaus is stuck taking the stairs down to meet Diego at the bottom. “I feel like our family’s get togethers are just becoming an excuse for getting take out. Not that I’m complaining.”

“Speak for yourself, I eat take-out about 4 times a week,” Diego says. He’s got two bags in his hands, distinct grease stains on the bottom.

“We have Grace,” Five says smugly.

As if on cue Grace emerges from the dining room, “Dinner’s ready! Oh Diego! Sweetheart I didn’t know you were coming I didn’t make-”

Diego holds up his sandwich bags, “No worries, I’m covered.” He pecks her on the cheek as she leads them into the dining room.

Diego eyes the plates in front of Five and Klaus as they sit down at the table, looks back at his sandwich. “That looks better.”

“You can’t have any,” Five says, pulling his plate closer.

“Guys? Anyone home?” another voice calls from the foyer. “I thought you might wanna have dinner, I brought-” Vanya stops as she pokes her head into the dining room and catches sight of all them with food. “Oh,” she laughs.

“Come on, come on,” Diego pulls out a chair for her, “what’d you bring?”

“Chinese,” she says, taking the seat, dropping two more bags on the table. Oh Klaus is going to have so many leftovers for midnight snacks.

“This place looks…emptier,” Vanya says as she looks around.

“All in the name of funding so I can turn this room into a disco, so burn it into your memories,” as if it wasn’t already in plenty. Maybe it’ll end up looking like Dave’s disco, Klaus hasn’t decided.

“A disco?” Diego asks, eyebrows shooting up. “Nuh uh, no way.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not happening,” Five assures him with a pointed look at Klaus.

Vanya gives a sheepish smile, unpacks her crab Rangoon. “I dunno, it might be kind of…fun.” Klaus gives her an approving grin and hand wave.

“Allison,” Diego says, “call her for the tie breaker.”

“Good idea,” Klaus says, Allison will totally be on his side. Vanya gets out her phone and starts to dial but suddenly stops.

“Is that…coming from upstairs?” she looks up at the ceiling and they all look with her.

Klaus left the record player going and Luther’s room is right above them. Klaus instantly wonders if they’d heard it like he did when they first came back and Luther’s first instinct was to play Tiffany of all things.

No one says anything for a minute, too lost in their own heads. Like always. Then Vanya says with a small soft smile, “I don’t remember this one.”

Five’s smile is cockier. “You’re too young.”

_Ben was the first one to throw up and no one was surprised but everyone laughed. He’d bent at the waist outside Griddy’s, looking woozy and green. “Ugh, shut up.”_

_“You ate 6 doughnuts,” Allison said from over Luther’s shoulder where she was perched on him in piggyback fashion. “Of course you’re sick.”_

_“Luther had 6 too!”_

_“I have a stronger stomach,” he said like it was obvious. But he was probably right, super durability apparently also translates into not upchucking pink frosting all over the pavement._

_It was October 3 rd, 2002 and they’d been 13 for 2 days. They’d been to Griddy’s twice before and the waitresses remembered them from the last times, then again they were probably the only kids running around in matching school uniforms at 10 o’clock at night. Klaus told them they were all allergic to the sun so it was totally normal for them to be out at that time and Allison rumored them to believe the outrageous lie. _

_Klaus had managed 4 and he felt one good heave and he’d probably be in the same position as Ben and yet he still wished he had had more. He’d had doughnuts exactly 3 times in his life and all from here and they felt like a reward for something. This time it was a congratulations on making it to 13, to the year dad had told them they’d finally get to step out into the world and actually become The Umbrella Academy._

_“Five’s gonna be next,” Allison said grinning. Five did indeed looking like he’d be the second in line for losing it all over the sidewalk._

_“I’m fine,” he said sharply but he had to swallow heavily and take a deep breath after. Diego made a retching noise and Five punched on the arm._

_“How m-much m-money do we have left?” Diego asked and Vanya – officially put in charge of holding onto it, as designated by Five – pulls the meager bills from her pocket._

_“2 dollars,” she said sadly. Not enough money to get them all on a bus. Klaus was fine with walking honestly. It wasn’t cold out yet and the air felt freeing. And best of all there wasn’t any spirits lurking around trying to grab at him. He thought it’s because they were all together, they always tended to leave him alone more when he was with his brothers and sisters._

_“It’s not that far,” Five said._

_“Says the one who can just flash there,” Ben said, still hunched over. Five gave him a toothy smile that got ruined when he gagged as Ben spit on the ground._

_“We should get back soon though,” Luther said and there was a tinge of worry in his voice. Dad hadn’t caught them either time they’d been out before but there was no telling exactly what he’d do if he did. Probably run 50 laps around the house til they couldn’t walk out even if he let them._

_“Hey what are you kids doing out here?” Suddenly there was a very angry looking woman slamming open the door to the diner and they all stopped like deer in the headlights and then watched as her face changed from anger to disgust as she caught sight of the mess on the ground right outside the restaurant._

_“Run!” Diego shouted, lurching over to wrap a hand around Ben’s arm and bolting. Luther, with Allison holding on for dear life was only a half second behind. Vanya made a noise like a kitten getting its paw stepped on and grabbed Luther’s jacket as he passed and tried to keep pace. Klaus, once he realized exactly what was happening, tripped over his feet to catch up. As he turned there was a flash of blue light and the woman’s voice saying, “What the hell?!”_

_They scrambled down the street, not looking to see if they were being followed, all of them just set on getting away. Someone laughed, he thinks it was Diego, and then there was Allison’s voice and she started laughing too. And Klaus couldn’t really breathe but he was laughing too._

_Diego yanked Ben down an alleyway and they all careened around the corner to follow, all finally stopping to catch their breath. No one was actually behind them, which kind of just made it funnier. Ben pulled his arm from Diego and dizzily landed on his butt on the gross pavement but he didn’t look like he could think of much else beyond not throwing up again._

_“Ya know,” Klaus said when he could manage it, “Allison probably could have just rumored her to ignore us.”_

_They all stopped as they considered this. He was right. In fact this gaggle of kids in their knee socks had a whole arsenal of tricks up their sleeve that that woman wouldn’t have even comprehended._

_Five appeared in front of them, self satisfied grin on his face – until he teetered on his feet, clutched at his stomach, and followed Ben’s earlier example, hurling a good several doughnuts in the grimy alley. Klaus laughed, which only set off everyone else. The more Five glared at them between heaves only made them laugh harder._

_Klaus could have said then that Allison could also just rumor the bus driver to let them on, or even to get a taxi to let them ride for free. But it was a nice night and the house wasn’t even a full mile away. Klaus felt light and happy and that was a rare feeling for him. If he could drag it out for a little longer – drag it out for all of them – then he was perfectly happy walking._

_They were just waiting at that point, waiting for the alarm to go off, for that first Big Mission that they’d be called out to. They’d spent 13 years of their lives training for that moment so they had to be ready by now. Klaus didn’t have a lot of faith in his powers, he still hated all the nightmares and whispering, all the lurching dead just standing around watching him. But at that moment he was excited, really honestly excited. Maybe it would be the best thing to happen to them, maybe everything would feel different once they were really heroes. And besides, the ghosts tended to stay away when they were all together._

He still doesn’t try and conjure Luther. It’s not Five’s fault but it’s still the reason. Klaus rethinks these last few weeks and all the times Luther asked him not to tell Five he was there or that Klaus was talking to him. He can’t blame them, either of them.

He plays a record every once in a while, he’s bored with his old CDs. Five tends to leave his door open these days but never complains.

It’s sitting outside smoking in the gazebo one chilly afternoon that he realizes he has no fucking clue what he’s supposed to be doing. Not just here in the gazebo, he’s supposed to be finishing this cigarette right now, but like…in life. He is well aware of how this is a thought very, very long overdue.

‘Finally got around to that huh?’ Ben says in his head.

Yeah yeah, Benny boy, the 30 year old man finally arrives at the fact that he has exactly zero prospects and zero ideas beyond getting up in the morning. It’s all very funny. Then again, the fact that he is planning to get up in morning is a pretty big deal, actually. For him anyway.

It’s not that Klaus had never considered it. It would have been easy for him. Purposely take just a little more than he was supposed to, overdose in a place no one would find him. He could buy a rope, some razors, alcohol and a lot of pills. No more voices of the damned yammering away around him, no more week long benders just to shut them up. He didn’t have anyone who would miss him, he never stayed anywhere long enough and the people he met weren’t the kind that had great long term memories anymore. He had thought of his family, wondered if they’d even find out, and how. Until dad kicked the bucket he hadn’t spoken to or seen any of them for years.

But there was always some little voice in his head that told him to resist the urge no matter how strong it was or how miserable he felt. Half the time it was Ben of course, and the other half he wished he could pretend wasn’t really himself underneath it all. There was a part of him that wasn’t so much of a nihilistically rampaging id of a person who still wanted to stick around just to see what would happen. So when he did give in to the occasional overindulgence he’d have a back-up plan.

And then there was also Ben. Ben, who was stuck by his side through it all, who existed only because of him. If Klaus went away, then so did he. For good. Somehow it felt both selfish and not, he got to keep Ben and Ben got to stay.

And hey, now he did have his siblings around; they had a big ol’ genuine reunion that included take-out and drinking and the occasional ‘hey our childhood was fucked up right?’ That should patch everything right up, they should all be cured and happy within the month. Except not. Obviously. But Klaus will admit – happily, honestly – that it helps. Despite his boomerang bender he’d gone on for awhile when they got back it still felt good to know that he had a couple brothers and sisters who will maybe sigh and roll their eyes at him, but welcome him in nonetheless.

So tomorrow he’ll wake up and he probably won’t manage to come up with a whole new life plan by the end of day but maybe he can make a list? Could Five help him with a list? The answer feels like both a yes and a no. (Hell, could get him going on that path to life coaching.) Maybe he should look into that psychology shit, he seems to not be completely terrible at it. Who knew all those years of group therapy and endless buzzwords and phrases would actually manage to burrow into his subconscious even through all the drugs?

His cigarette’s burnt down to nothing but ash when he finally brings it back to his lips. Wow he’d been thinking hard. Been a while. He meanders over to where he’s pretty sure they dumped dad’s ashes even though there’s nothing left, and drops the butt on the ground (he’ll pick it up later, promise). He looks out across the courtyard, yet again amazed, as he had been in his youth, that for some reason the noises of the city outside can’t be heard within the fences. 

He looks at Ben’s statue, standing watch over them, hopefully feeling prouder than before. He reads the plaque from afar, and then looks at the newer one beside it.

“Hey Ben,” Klaus asks out loud, “what do you think I should do about Luther?”

He doesn’t get an answer, even from the ghost of a ghost in his head.

_(Five Hargreeves has a name and he’d picked it himself. Grace had had the idea, had decided they all needed something more than just numbers. They’d been old enough to have a say in them too, which almost no other child got. Diego took to his right away, Allison turned down a few first, Klaus’s was the second one offered, Vanya took to hers with a gracious smile, Ben’s suited his nature and Luther’s did as well._

_There’d been several ideas tossed around for Five (he’ll admit he had been fond of Atticus) but none rang true. So he’d stayed Five for a little longer, and then a little longer yet._

_It was his father’s voice. The way he barked out, “On your feet Number One!” “Stop lagging Number Six!” “You have to try harder Number Two!” that got to him. They had names now but Reginald had yet to even acknowledge them. They are only numbers to him._

_“Five,” Five told Grace and the others, “My name’s just Five.”_

_They don’t understand (though Grace shows her usual enthusiasm) but they don’t need to. When Reginald Hargreeves called out their numbers he’d be calling out Five’s name. The man would have to say it. His brothers and sisters are more than numbers, he’s proud of them for it, but Five will own his.)_

“-and that’s when Shondell kicked me out the third time. She kept my best pair of platforms too, even though they didn’t fit her at all. Her feet were bigger than mine-”

“Are you going to continue recounting every minute of your 20’s,” Five asks, “or are you going to let me think for 5 seconds?” His face is pinched as he whirls on Klaus, balancing on the ladder against a bookshelf in the library.

“20’s?” Klaus says, “Oh no, that was only 18, I haven’t even gotten to my 20’s yet.”

Five lets a heavy breath out through his nose.

Five insists he spends time among the books, he didn’t say anything about not spending all that time talking. The library remains untouched for the most part, saved by Klaus’s destruction mostly by Five’s ire and maybe perhaps this is the rare room in the house Klaus actually likes for what it is. Most of the books are about science and math and the fiction is mostly in ancient Greek or flowery Shakespeare talk (Ben was the reader, not him), but it still feels – if he had to put a word on it – cozy. Besides their individual rooms and the kitchen and despite the size of it the library was the next nicest place in the house.

Klaus inspects the stack of books Five has pulled out so far. All science and math and not a single thing Klaus was ever smart enough to understand. He is well aware of his strengths (…whatever they may be) and he is secure enough as a person to acknowledge he is not ‘smart’. He’s sexy trash.

When he tries to start talking again Five blinks over to the other side of the room. Fine then. Klaus turns his attention to the section he’s wandered over to, the name Goethe hitting him right in the brain and stirring up memories of trying to make sense of Heaven and Hell and devils and angels, even though Reginald never really explained religion to them.

(That had been so utterly confusing and unnerving to him growing up. Were all those ghosts angels who hadn’t gone to Heaven yet? Or devils who hadn’t gone to Hell? Was _this_ Hell? Many hours were lost staring at the ceiling thinking about it and the two or three times he’d tried talking to one of the specters to find out he’d just gotten more monologuing about their deaths and lives and oh they could’ve done more and blah blah blah. Bless Ben and Luther for being a hell of a lot more receptive.)

Klaus plucks it out because he’s feeling masochistic today or something and flips a couple pages.

 _‘_ _You may find him anywhere, my dear / When others dance, he's got to criticize / and if he fails to criticize a step / that step might just as well have not been taken.’_

The fuck does that even mean? But it’s not the quote itself that really catches his eye as much as the small blue pen mark next to it and at the bottom of the page the mark again where it corresponds like a footnote to where someone’s written ‘ _sounds_ _familiar_ ’.

It’s Ben’s handwriting, Klaus knows it from all the years copying off his assignments. He doesn’t even realize he’s let out a fond noise as he looks at it until Five’s voice – right next to him, dammit – asks, “What’s that?”

Klaus tilts the book towards him. “Ben wrote notes in this one.” He lets Five take it from him. He turns a couple pages and there’s more notes to be found. Nothing long or elaborate, just a word or two occasionally, always with a little symbol that matches to a footnote at the bottom of the page.

“Wonder if there’s more,” Five says, looking up at the wall of books in front of Klaus.

Klaus has never actually looked through the books on the shelves in Ben’s bedroom so it’s entirely possible they’re all filled with little notations like this. He wonders if Ben had filled them all up so he had to start with the books in the library.

Five is silent for a moment before he blinks away and reappears at the pile of books he’s accumulated on the other side of the room. He pulls one out from the bottom.

“I found this the other day,” he says and if he sounds more thoughtful than normal then Klaus is definitely not going to point it out and ruin it. He crosses the room and holds out a book.

It’s a physics textbook, stock photos of a planet with two moons on the front. Klaus isn’t quite sure what he’s getting at at first before he notices there’s a number of papers stuck in between the pages. He opens to the first one to find a piece of lined notebook paper, filled top to bottom with numbers and equations and hand drawn graphs. Luther never let Klaus cheat off his work but it doesn’t take a lot to realize it’s from him.

“It’s nothing I can use,” Five says, and of course he has to be pragmatic about it first, “it’s all trajectories and fuel equations, but-” he pauses, “he did know his math.”

Luther was awkward and unsteady in a lot of ways; but then again 30 years of Reginald Hargreeves will do that to a person. He didn’t seem to care much about art and literature when he was younger, finding his poetry was a genuine surprise, and it was clear a lot of the world hadn’t made sense to him. But he did go to fucking space. The page in Klaus’s hand shows a man who knew what he was writing about.

There’s a whole bunch more papers stuck in throughout the book and Klaus doesn’t have to look at them to be impressed and know that none of it will make any sense to him.

“Were he and Ben close? When we were younger?” Five asks, “I can’t remember.”

Klaus can’t say he remembers either. They seem like very disparate people in his mind but then again none of them knew about Luther’s love of poetry, how sensitive he actually was. And Ben had been sensitive too, he’d cared deeply about even little things. Maybe they had been close and Klaus just never noticed. Or maybe they’d never had the chance to be the kind of friends who shared notes on Keats and had inside jokes about Byron (Byron was one Romantic that Klaus did actually enjoy, not surprisingly). A team on the field yet islands of their own behind the doors of the house.

“Carry these,” Five says, dropping Faust on top of the physics book, and then in a blink depositing 4 more heavy books in his arms. Klaus doesn’t topple over with the weight but it’s close.

Klaus bitches and moans as he follows Five up the stairs (‘you could do this in 2 seconds Fiiiive…’) but he follows him anyway. He drops them down on his desk with an exaggerated ‘oof!’ and shakes out his arms. Five isn’t paying attention, already taking two and laying them open on his bed, somehow flipping through them like he can understand them both at the same time.

Klaus looks down at Faust, feels a smile tug at his lips. He’s gonna keep this one, he thinks. Ben has enough books. He won’t read it, because he can’t nor does he care, but he’ll keep it around. And Five can have the other one, it’ll make sense to him. He flicks it open to where another notebook paper is tucked inside.

“I shouldn’t have gone in that room,” Five says and when Klaus turns he’s staring at where he’s holding the piece of paper.

“Which room?”

“That storage room.” Oh, the mad scientist museum.

“In the name of The Great Purge of the Umbrella mansion,” Klaus says, “we’ll call it a necessary ev-”

“He wouldn’t have found the gun if I hadn’t.”

Klaus physically reels back like Five might as well have pushed him. He could have taken a stab in the dark 100 times and not have expected that.

Five shakes his head as if at himself, isn’t looking at Klaus when he speaks. “I was trying to catalogue the damn place, try and figure out what dad was doing with all of it, see if anything was useful.” Anger mixes with guilt in his voice, “It was a Perseus weapon. Wouldn’t have worked if it was normal.”

John Perseus: just one of handful of uppity men who fancied themselves supervillains. Only he didn’t have much going for him besides money and slightly above average smarts. What he couldn’t do with superpowers he tried with tech and weapons. And Luther had enhanced durability (nice, huh, a guy making a gun specifically to kill a kid), a normal bullet may not have done enough damage.

Five’s still not looking at him, but Klaus can see his face going red. “I left it out, I should have just destroyed everything in there…”

“Klaus tell him he’s wrong!”

Klaus startles badly at the sudden outburst at his side, at Luther appearing there in a heartbeat. He staggers, stumbles for something to say. “Wha-what do you-”

“Tell him he’s wrong,” Luther says, voice vehement and desperate. “Tell him it’s not his fault, tell him it didn’t happen because of him. I knew about it before he ever went down there.”

Klaus puts up his hands at Luther in a wild attempt at getting one of them to stop talking so he can process everything. “Okay, wait, wait, I’ll tell him just-”

“Klaus?” Five’s looking at him, eyebrows furrowed, confused.

Luther is practically shaking, “You have to tell him, please Klaus.”

“Alright, I will, I am,” Klaus says, sounding a little more frazzled than he’d like.

Five stills, “Is he here?”

Klaus takes a breath, gestures towards the space where Luther’s standing. “Yes,” and Five’s eyes go wide but before he can say anything Klaus cuts him off. “He says you’re wrong, it’s not your fault.”

Five is looking back and forth between Klaus and the area where Luther stands even though he just sees dead air. He looks like he’s not sure he believes it, but he wants to. “Luther, I…” When Luther opens his mouth to continue Klaus holds up a hand to Five.

“It was nothing he did,” Luther says and he’s watching Five now, looking weary, “I knew about everything in that room. If he’d gotten rid of it…” he glances at Klaus, like he’s hoping he can figure it out without having to say it. Klaus can. Luther hangs his head, “He shouldn’t blame himself.”

Klaus turns back to where Five’s staring at him, still wide eyed, waiting anxiously for him to say something.

“He already knew about it,” Klaus says then repeats: “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I did,” Luther says. Klaus chokes on his next breath, has to clear his throat. He doesn’t say that part, he doesn’t care what Luther thinks about it.

Five stays quiet for a while, brain working. He eventually takes a deep breath, stands up straighter. “Alright,” he says firmly though there’s still a quiver in his voice, “I believe him. Because he wants me to.”

Luther smiles but it’s the saddest goddamn smile Klaus has ever seen.

Oh Klaus wishes this was easy. It feels like something’s happened, feels like it’s changed and Klaus helped this time. If Five feels even the littlest bit better than he should be happier, why isn’t he happier? Cause it doesn’t really erase the fact that it only happened because Klaus can see ghosts, that’s why.

“Is he still there?” Five asks, pointing at the space next to Klaus. Klaus turns to Luther to make sure he actually wants him to admit it this time. He nods.

“Yep,” Klaus says, injects some cheeriness into his voice, “looking dashing in that black turtleneck as usual.” Luther lets out a huff of laughter and it seems genuine.

Klaus steels himself for Five to ask any number of questions that he’s not sure he’s ready to ask Luther, nevermind if Luther would be ready to answer them (although just one would be enough: ‘why?’) He’s not corporeal but if he was Klaus is sure Luther would be readying himself the same.

“This equation you got,” Five says, pushing past Klaus to the book on the desk, flipping it open to one of the sheets of paper inside and pulling it out. “I’m not sure it applies to my theories but I want to know how you arrived at it.”

Luther’s looking over his shoulder, and it’s like a switch has been flipped and they’re both in smart brain mode. “Oh, he has to go back way before I got here, tell him to start with-”

Klaus spends the next hour relaying completely nonsensical math and science talk between them and almost wishes they would just get all emotional and deep instead.

_“What’s it like being dead?” Klaus asked._

_Ben cocked his head to the side, pursing his lips as he thought. “It’s kind of like…I’m here but I could be anywhere.”_

_Klaus rolled his eyes. “The hell does that even mean? Of course you’re here but like, not.”_

_Ben narrowed his eyes and gave Klaus a sidelong look. “I_ mean _it’s like I feel present but my body is…like molecules, just particles that could float off any time.” He tilted his head the other way, squinted like he was looking through his brain like a rolodex for the answer. “It’s like I’m just pieces but something’s keeping me stuck together.”_

_Klaus considered this for a long moment. He’d taken at least three pain pills he’d pilfered from the medical room and he was a little fuzzy around the edges. He could say he hadn’t expected that answer but then again, he hadn’t actually expected any kind of answer that made sense anyway. He’d spent so much of his life running from these things that he hadn’t stopped to figure them out. Not that he had wanted to talk to them until Ben._

_“What’s keeping you stuck together though?” he asked. His voice sounded groggy._

_Ben thought some more. That was Ben. “You, I guess.” But before Klaus could process that and feel any particular way about it, he continued: “And me. I’m keeping myself together.”_

_Ben hadn’t gone right away when he died, he’d stayed and for the longest time Klaus thought it was only because he asked him to. He was getting sleepy, his head was heavy on the pillow and that elephant tapestry was starting to spin. “Good for you.” He passed out._

_Maybe if he’d been a smarter kid, or more self aware, he’d know there were more questions to ask. Or maybe if his dad hadn’t been the Illustrious Reginald Hargreeves who most famously locked his son in a mausoleum as a fun exercise in torment. Either way Klaus chose to run instead of trying to figure it out. He never asked the ghosties ‘why’ or ‘how’._

_He doesn’t know why he was able to see Ben even with the drugs in his system, he’d never thought about it that much. He didn’t want to because who knew what would happen if he did something wrong? Bye bye Ben, and Klaus would be alone again. Well Klaus is on the other side of it now and all these questions are starting to bug him, the fuckers._

Luther comes back after the talk with Five. Klaus is relieved every time he finds him (“ _Guess it makes sense I’d end up being the real phantom of this place.”_ Again: ouch Luther). The mansion is so damn quiet all the time and when Five’s off doing whatever he does or checking in with Diego and Vanya and leaving Klaus to his own devices Klaus feels the silence like a blanket over his shoulders.

 _“Whenever it gets quiet, you go back there. Sometimes you wonder if the silence_ ….” Goddammit Luther, you’re not allowed to drop anymore bombshell lines for at least a month. Poet or not.

“How’s it looking?” Klaus asks with a twirl, arms out to indicate the changes he’s made to the dining room. The table and chairs had been sold off for a hefty sum (Diego gripped about it but Vanya was particularly happy to see it go; there was the argument that the table represented when they all came together, ate together like a family, but that was tossed aside because those memories all included Reginald too; they still have the kitchen table which is better anyway). Klaus had found an abstract painting that looks like Picasso’s second cousin threw up all over it and it hangs proudly on the wall next to some suggestive looking sconces.

Luther gives it a once over, gives an approving nod, “It’s good. What does Five think?”

“Hates it,” Klaus says immediately and Luther grins. The ghosts around Klaus don’t usually grin. They’re usually sad bastards just bitching and moaning about their deaths. Ben bitched and moaned but that was mostly Klaus’s fault.

Luther spins slowly in a circle, taking in the new vastness of the room and the light coming in through the windows now that the heavy curtains have gone the way of the table. Klaus looks at him then and sees how, in another world, maybe he’d been a different person in every way. If you took away the bulk of the gorilla body that had been forced on him, the lifetime of trauma and desperate obedience, the years alone in a place no one would ever find him, maybe he’d be a normal guy. A normal, 6 foot 5 inch tall guy.

Then again, if you take away all of their childhoods and powers maybe they’d all be normal. But no. Klaus’s chemicals are fucked up, Luther’s were too. In a way it’s not fair to them to pretend they’d be perfectly okay if it weren’t for all of that.

Luther stops, looks over at Klaus and there’s something in his eyes that would probably be mischief on anyone else. “What are you planning to do to his office?”

Klaus lights up, “Oh that is a project I haven’t decided on just yet but I am always open to suggestions. I was leaning towards a hookah bar.”

Luther laughs. Every time Klaus manages it he still feels like he’s won something. From what little Klaus can remember Luther had been so…somber, in his last days. ‘Last days’, God Klaus throws that thought away as fast as he can. “There’s so many rooms to have fun with so I really am looking for ideas. His bedroom, for one, office of course, the training rooms are begging to be something fun – I have no clue what – and the examination room? Ugh, I mean-”

Wait. Fuck. Klaus stops, looks to Luther who’s gone completely still, gaze distant. It’s where…

There’s a square of carpet that’s been cut out of that room because they couldn’t get the blood out.

The examination room was where they all stood against a yard stick and dad would write their heights into one of his notebooks; weigh them, prick them with needles to test their reflexes, examine their goddamn skull sizes, test their fucking grip strength. It was the room where Reginald Hargreeves poked and prodded them and looked for any kind of irregularity that might make them more like freaks than they already were.

Klaus clears his throat in an ineffectual gesture of nonchalance. Let’s pretend he didn’t say that, shall we? Let’s keep talking about hookahs and disco balls and all the things that don’t actually matter so we can ignore the things that do. Luther’s eyes are pointed towards the floor, and even beneath the mass of muscles Klaus can read the tension in him.

“Why that room?” Klaus asks and then nearly slaps himself. Where the _hell_ did that come from? He didn’t give permission to this mouth to say that, so he must be able to take it back, right? Wrong, if the look Luther gives him is any indication.

He looks powerless, like he had been expecting the question but hoping it never came, and he’s been completely caught off guard. No no, he’s the leader, he never gets caught off guard. Klaus remembers so many fights and battles where Luther never even flinched, never let anyone get the better of him. It’ll all be fine as long as Number One knows what he’s doing, it’s what Klaus always told himself.

Luther starts to speak but nothing comes out at first and Klaus almost jumps on it and waves it away like everything else, make a joke and pretend it’s fine, but he wants to know, really deep down he wants to know.

“I couldn’t be good enough,” Luther says and it’s not so much soft as flat, as if he’s speaking an answer he’s turned over and over in his head for years. “All the numbers said I was, everything I did proved I was. But…” he shrugs and gives a hopeless, mirthless smile, “it was all a lie. It made sense to do it there.”

He falls in on himself then, suddenly going from the formidable strong man to a kid who doesn’t know himself outside these walls. When he speaks again it’s completely detached, a voice from a body that doesn’t exist anymore. “He knew it too, so I just proved him right.”

Klaus feels a tear slip down his cheek, his body’s just doing all kinds of things without his brain’s permission huh? He wipes at it and turns it into a flamboyant hand wave. He bites back the part of him that wants to scream that ‘good enough’ for Reginald Hargreeves means fucking nothing, that ‘good enough’ for the Umbrella Academy was the lie and that no matter what Luther did he would never make dad happy. Why didn’t he want to be good enough for them? For Five and Allison, Diego and Vanya, for him?

But he won’t. Not fair, Klaus, not fair. Life’s not fucking fair but Klaus will try his hardest to be. At least when it comes to these few people. “You were good enough Luther, you were.”

And damn, that doesn’t help. Klaus why are you so stupid? Can’t take back a suicide. Can’t tell a suicide victim that hey, come on! Everyone loves you! You should have known that, you should see how much we all want you around but you’re not around anymore are you? Right then he wishes so badly – as badly as he had when he was locked inside the mausoleum, when he first took a pill to make the ghosts go away, when he drank enough to consider calling for Dave’s spirit just to see if he was really dead – that he didn’t have this fucking power. 

Luther’s face falls, like suddenly the weight of the whole world gets dropped on his shoulders. When he looks Klaus in the eye it feels like he’s forcing himself to, his voice sounds like defeat, “I’m sorry.”

No. No no no. Fuck. Klaus clenches his fists and puts them at his temples, shuts his eyes so intensely he’s gonna give himself a headache. When he can speak what he manages is, “You don’t listen to me!”

He opens his eyes and Luther is confused. Sad, and confused.

“No one in this house listens to me!” Klaus says and he wants it to sound like a joke but doesn’t quite hit it even with a thready laugh. “It’s what I told Five, don’t you remember? Don’t say sorry, that’s not how it works! You…no one knew, okay? We didn’t, you didn’t. We’re…fucked. And you got the shit end of the stick and got fucked up in a bad way we didn’t understand.” He throws up his hands and lets them fall against his sides. “I’m fucked up too, but it’s different than you.”

Luther still looks confused, which isn’t what Klaus was going for but he’ll take it over the soul crushing misery that was there before. “I mean,” Klaus says, not knowing what he means, “It’s not okay…but it’s alright.”

Wow. He’s rescinding that ban on Luther’s poetics.

Luther’s quiet and that makes Klaus want to scream. This house is too quiet as it is (oh God is this what Luther was surrounded by for so long? It’s no wonder-), but Klaus physically bites his tongue.

“I’m still sorry,” Luther says but it’s half a world away from the agonizing way he’d said it before. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone. For- for what I did, and as a Number One.”

Klaus takes a breath he feels down to the bottom of his lungs. He lets it out and lets his whole body go loose like an errant slinky. “It’s alright.” He blows a lock of hair out of his face and looks up at the chandelier that he’ll keep, thinks about all the silent dinners they ate under that thing, “When it’s, ya know, hate for someone else, or something, you can use that. It keeps you going. Self hate? Not much you can do with that.”

When he looks up Luther’s smiling. Smiling.

“What?” Klaus says, utterly thrown.

“That was very insightful of you,” he says and there’s something like pride in his expression but Klaus isn’t sure cause he’s not used to seeing that particular emotion from anyone that looks at him.

“Your fault,” he says. Luther gives the smallest chuckle and Klaus lets go of some of the anxiety that’s keeping his muscles taut.

The atmosphere of the room has shifted, back to something less desperate and remorseful. Ben would be proud. He’d be beaming right now, so happy that Klaus had actually said something that meant a damn, had connected with one of their own in such a way. Klaus doesn’t want to ruin it for him by saying it wouldn’t have happened if Luther wasn’t dead like he was. He shakes his head a little to chase away the thought, he wants to feel good about this, please.

There’s so much more that hasn’t been said and Klaus is at least ‘emotionally intelligent’ to know that. There’s more to Luther’s story than just not being good enough. Klaus’s addictions are about more than just ‘sees ghosts’. But there’s a hope – that fragile hope Klaus doesn’t usually put much stock in – that he’ll get more answers some day.

“DJ booth’s gonna go over there,” he says, pointing to the far side of the room and Luther laughs airily but it’s real this time.

Klaus finally steps out of the spot he’s been rooted to though this whole thing and gestures grandly as an excuse just to move. He’s never been good at standing still. “I hope you’re working on that playlist buddy.”

“’Buddy’?” Luther asks, cocking his head in confused amusement.

“I don’t trust Diego,” Klaus tells him. What a disaster that’d be. He’s pretty sure Diego only listens to Tool.

Luther’s still smiling and as long as he does that Klaus will consider this as an achievement. Ben had felt like a sentient limb, something separate from him but attached nonetheless. Klaus feels like there’s still a lake to cross to get to Luther, but hey, he still has that safety ring thing or whatever it’s called and a rope. 

When he speaks again it’s half on purpose and half not. “Luther,” he says and even to himself he sounds unsteady, “why are you here? I mean-” he flounders, “why are you talking to me at all? You could…go wherever, can’t you?” Yeah, okay, that’s totally what he meant to say.

Ben had been tied to him, or at least that’s what he thought. He thought there was a tether keeping him close, but then again he’d never asked.

Luther stills and he regards Klaus for a second, shrugs and says, “You have to stay clean so you can talk to me don’t you?”

Klaus got his heart broken a long time ago, probably before he even knew it. Probably got shattered by Reginald Hargreeves when he was a child looking for love and didn’t find it. But now it definitely hurts like hell.

_Klaus woke up disoriented and sweaty, head whipping around to find the source of his nightmare. But he only found his dark room, where he had only just begun scrawling the words of the dead on his walls, and Luther standing at his bedside._

_“You were having a bad dream,” Luther said in a hush, always aware that dad may wake and force his input on the situation._

_Klaus shook_ _his head, rubbed his eyes. Bad dreams weren’t new, only the degree of the horror changed. “Where’s Ben?”_

_“Still asleep, I think,” Luther said, apologetically like he knew he wasn’t what Klaus was expecting. Ben must have been exhausted from his private training with dad if he slept through one of Klaus’s nightmares, he was usually the one to shake him awake._

_“Sorry,” Klaus mumbled, and pulled his covers up tighter around his neck. Luther looked like he didn’t know what to do, eyes darting around a room that he pretty much never saw._

_“Do you…do you need me to stay?”_

_It must have been midnight or later and they always woke at 530AM on the dot. Luther was the first one on his feet, ready and waiting by the door. Surely he hadn’t wanted to stick around and wait while Klaus tried to forget yet another nightmare and get what meager sleep he could. But he wasn’t leaving._

_He’d been listening to something hadn’t he? Some record turned down so low only Klaus could hear it through the vent. Klaus had fallen asleep to it, it had to have been only an hour ago. And Luther was still awake, Klaus wasn’t cognizant enough to understand what that meant._

_Klaus thought for a moment, considered his brother in the little light there was. “Can you put the record back on?”_

_Luther was surprised by the request but it only took a second for his expression to turn into something softer. “Yeah, sure,” he said._

_Klaus didn’t know what the album was, doesn’t remember even a word or a note, but it was nice. It was comforting, like Luther._

There’s times when Klaus is walking through the house – could be anywhere: the stairwell, the kitchen, the library, the disco that’s coming along quite nicely – where he feels like the damn place itself is watching him. Not in a ‘Reginald Hargreeves has possessed the house and is listening from beyond the grave’ type way, more like the house has been hiding some burgeoning sentience and has been looming around them all this time. Klaus is still convinced that it’s so fucking quiet on purpose just to drive him insane.

Klaus would be a terrible liar to say that he doesn’t miss the pills and the alcohol and raves and parties. But he misses it in a way that, for the first time ever, feels less like the hooks in his skin are trying to drag him back and more like a part of himself that he can look at sitting across from him at the dinner table. Alright he is going crazy. But that Klaus is like the little ghost dad that’s sitting in the fireplace. They make all the noise they want but they belong to a past that he’s slowly (very slowly) stepping away from.

That’s not to say he’s not tempted plenty. It would be so easy to just waste away an afternoon with some molly while he stashes glowsticks in places for Five to find later. Easy to blank out his brain with something stronger whenever he feels the creeping depression when he happens to think too hard about Dave, or Ben. Or Luther. To take just any damn thing and be able to ignore just how oppressive the world seems sometimes. Things are better when he can’t think straight and he’s tripping over himself instead of wallowing. Or they used to be at least.

He will still drink from time to time, sorry everyone. Every couple of days one badly made Tequila Sunrise turns into 4 or 5 and occasionally Five joins him (Klaus should probably stop him, cause he’s technically 14 but the one time he did try and take one away Five stabbed the sleeve of his caftan to the bar with an ice pick). Luther doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe he needs some nights off from Klaus occasionally.

(Klaus doesn’t say anything to him and barely admits it to himself but there are nights where he isn’t up to seeing Luther. Those make up about half of the nights he drinks. It’s not that Luther’s not good company but there are moments where Klaus looks over at him and it’ll hit that he’s not really there and he’d chosen that himself. What Five said before wasn’t all that empathetic, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t fucking hurt that yes, Luther’s gone and it was by choice. And some nights Klaus will drink because he hates that he was too wrapped up in himself to notice before it was too late. But that’s how it is, how it’s been, right? Broken down as separate people, and all that.)

But Klaus wakes up every morning. He’s gotten pretty good at it. Except for the days he sleeps til 3PM and wakes up to Five dumping a glass of water over his head.

He hasn’t made that list yet, the one of all the things he could maybe be or try now that his life is semi-stable. He’s still poking at the idea of psychology but that means teachers, and classes, and – ugh – essays and shit. Klaus is not what he would call a ‘scholastic’ man. But he has picked up some books, he’s flipped through them. Even put up with all the whiney ghosts at the public library to get them.

“There’s a bunch of notebooks in my desk,” Luther tells him, “you can use them if you want. Or give them to Five.”

Klaus does pull them out one day, there’s a whole stack of them. Except 3 of them are full. There’s notes and graphs and the kinds of things like what they keep finding tucked away in science books, but there’s bits and pieces of writing too. A sentence or two that came to Luther and had to be jotted down, fancy words with their definitions he perhaps wanted to use, every once in a while there’s attempts at full poems but so many are scribbled out so thoroughly that Klaus can’t read them. He shows Five those notebooks but keeps them in the desk otherwise, gives Five the empty ones.

“How come,” Klaus says at the end of blowing out a smoke ring (one of his few talents), “you never told anyone you were a poet?”

Luther actually blushes, which Klaus doesn’t think he’s ever seen a ghost do, and looks down. “I was hardly a poet. None of them were all that good. I just figured…maybe Grace or Pogo would read them.” He doesn’t say dad but Klaus knows that Luther had held out hope for that for a long time. Klaus still hates the man so much he sometimes forgets that finding out he hated them back can still hurt.

“We’ll put them in a book,” Klaus tells him, “In Vanya’s next book about how retired child superheroes still have to pay bills.” He’d pitched the title Actually Ordinary to her and she had turned it down without even giving it a chance.

Luther laughs, high and strained. “Please don’t,” he says like he’s amused but the look in his eye is pleading.

It’s the days when Luther chooses not to be there – not the ones where Klaus is actively drinking so he can avoid him – that Klaus misses him. Maybe if he just wanders the halls long enough he’ll run into the lonely specter of his brother looking for a place he belongs.

God Klaus you should be selling Luther these lines. He throws one of dad’s shoes in the fireplace (he kept a couple for this exact reason). 

He sees his brothers and sisters every so many days, even if Allison is only on video chat. They go about their day in day out lives but nothing’s come up that’s as crazy as the world ending. Klaus knits. He redecorates. He buys more clothes than he could ever need. He even reads sometimes. And he talks to Five. And he talks to Luther.

And at breakfast and lunch and dinner he’ll tell Grace thank you and tell her he likes her dress and can she teach him how to get his hair like that? She smiles and pats his arm and tells him that the strobe light he ordered came in. He’ll say goodnight to her on the nights he’s not drunk as she settles down to charge. She calls him sweetheart, and dear, and love. He kept the house for her, originally. At one point Luther thanks him for that. Reginald Hargreeves would hate him owning the place and that’s just a big fat bonus.

_Maybe they’re all angry. No one seems like it as they make the plans, order the plaque, sort through what’s left of him that doesn’t have dad’s fingerprints all over it (there’s not much), but maybe it’s just something that’s not being said. If they put all the things that never got said in a book it’d be ten times as big as Vanya’s._

_It’s August and Klaus hates it. It doesn’t feel right. Ben died in the winter, and so did dad. It should be snowing, or raining, it should be gray. They all hold umbrellas up against the sun._

_(Dad’s suicide never hit the way this does. His was a manipulation, a scheme. One last tug on the strings that he had tied around all of their necks.)_

_Klaus doesn’t feel angry, not yet. It’s 3AM and the dirt’s still fresh when he steps out of the house, unsteady on drunken, pill-addled legs, and looks up. Can’t even see the fucking stars for all the city lights. This_ house _is a mausoleum, he thinks dizzily._

“Klaus,” Luther says, one eyebrow cocked, “of course I have Diana Ross.” He points to the side of the bureau at one of the crates, “Over there.”

Klaus skims through it and sure enough, 3 whole Ross albums. Klaus pulls out _Silk Electric_ and holds it up. “I should never have doubted you!”

Luther hunches his shoulders, looks over the collection he’d built, says, “You could probably get a decent bit of money for all this.”

Klaus gasps, holds the Diana record to his chest. “Absolutely not and how dare you suggest it.” Luther shakes his head with a huff of laughter.

That’s the truth though – there’s no way in Hell they’re getting rid of the records. Same way they’re never going to give away Ben’s books. The moratorium on Grace cleaning the room has been lifted so she flutters in here every Thursday and dusts and vacuums. Klaus has taken to coming in here almost more than he goes to Ben’s room. Luther’s has better music.

Klaus carefully slots the record back into place because Luther’s watching and he can be respectful, he is capable of it.

“No?” Luther asks.

“Hmmm, no,” Klaus says, sliding his fingers down the titles of the other records in the case. Nothing is jumping out at him today. It’s wet and cold outside and Klaus needs something…light.

He’s been going through the collection and he’s still only a small fraction of the way through. It’s nice to see that at least in this way Luther was able to keep something of himself going even under dad’s roof.

“Everyone’s…good?” Luther asks, seemingly out of the blue if only Klaus wasn’t used to it. Luther gets nervous when he asks about the others. Afraid really. Klaus can’t say he can pinpoint exactly what he’s afraid of but he can hazard a guess.

If he tells him they’re thriving, happy and fulfilled and living their best lives then that means they’re better off without him and…well, then it really didn’t matter what he did. If Klaus tells him no, they’re all miserable and broke and sad and homeless, then that means Luther left them instead of helping and maybe if only he’d stayed they’d all be alright. In a fucked up, twisted way he’s glad Ben’s death was an accident. It’s weird that he can’t make Luther feel like he did the wrong or right thing, he doesn’t want him to feel worse than he does. (Luther still doesn’t stick around when anyone comes by, only occasionally lets Klaus speak to Five for him. Maybe someday that’ll change.)

But Klaus is not going to be bitter about this, he’s chosen not to be. He’s spent his whole life running from these fucking ghosts and phantoms and nightmares, done everything he can to drown them out. He’d gotten lucky with Ben, that he was able to stick around despite all that. He hasn’t figured out why it works different with the others, but he’s willing to work on it. If he would just sit down and make that list that’d be number 1. And what person deserves the effort more than Luther?

Klaus is done being angry; that’s Five’s thing. Dad’s not here and it feels like maybe that’s all he needed: to get out of his shadow. Maybe this power isn’t the worst curse ever – Hell he got to keep Ben because of it, gets to keep Luther. Call that a blessing, Klaus never had many of those.

“Everyone’s fine enough,” he says, trying for both reassuring and casual. “Diego got salmonella from that sandwich place.”

Luther laughs, loud and genuine. If Klaus has to walk that fine line where he understands why Luther did it and regrets it all the same than that’s alright, it’s not like he’s doing anything else.

“Oh!” a sudden shock of a thought comes to him then, “what was that song? That song that went…oh you know- Sunny! Sunny and her tools! I remember hearing it so clearly through the vent but-” he groans dramatically and looks to Luther.

Luther doesn’t answer right away, he looks…guilty. “Oh, yeah. You know I’m sorry about whole…about how you could hear my music all those years. I didn’t realize til later, I tried to keep it down-”

“Ah ah!” Klaus says, shoving a finger in his face, “Nope! No, Luther Hargreeves, you don’t get to take that away, that’s one of my favorite memories!”

Luther looks like he wants very badly to keep contrite but he’s failing miserably cause the sun’s about to shine out through his face. “Yeah?”

Klaus tries to look affronted. “Yes! You know, sometimes I’d lay on the floor, right by the vent, and listen.” He gives as brilliant a smile as he can, “You’re lucky you have such good taste though otherwise I’d have beaten the door down every night.”

Luther smiles. Another win. Another tally in the ‘Klaus you’ve done something good’ list and another in the ‘you did something good for Luther’ list. Luther looks down for a moment, something going on in his head, then he says – still smiling – “It’s one of the smaller discs. ‘C’ for Colvin.”

Klaus goes to a crate where the records are half the size as normal – singles and B-sides. He pulls out the one labeled ‘Colvin’ and as carefully as possible pulls it from its sleeve and sets it on the player, moves the needle so slow and precise that Luther laughs at him.

[There’s a jangly acoustic guitar intro – so 90’s – before the melody starts in and Klaus feels a tug on a distant memory, something that gets yanked forward as the lyrics start.](https://youtu.be/qfKKBDFCiIA)

_‘ Sunny came home to her favorite room, Sunny sat down in the kitchen, she opened a book and a box of tools…’_

Klaus yelps, puts a hand to his mouth and turns to Luther. “This is it! This is the song!”

“It’s a good song,” Luther says, grinning like he’s proud of it, proud that he’d chosen something Klaus liked.

The song swells into the chorus and Klaus can’t help but close his eyes, sway and move with it. He’s 14/15/16 with his head by the vent, lying on the harsh hardwood floor, his body and mind aching from hours and days and years as a Umbrella Academy cadet, and his brother is playing something lovely in the room next door.

He’s bigger than this house – or at least better than it. He’ll take this place down with him he promises; in his final hour he’ll douse the whole thing and light a match. Until then it’s gonna be his – his and Luther’s and Five’s and the others’ whenever they want it to be. He breathes out and listens to the song.

_‘Sunny came home with a list of names, she didn’t believe in transcendence. It’s time for a few small repairs she said…'_

**Author's Note:**

> …and then Five figures out how to bring Ben and Luther back without fucking everything up more and everyone’s happy. Yep.
> 
> The song they’re listening to is ‘Sunny Came Home’ by Shawn Colvin by the way: https://youtu.be/qfKKBDFCiIA
> 
> I 100% stand by my music choices for Luther. If you’re interested: Shawn Colvin, Eurythmics, The Clash, The Pogues, Diana Ross, The Go-Gos, Talking Heads, The Cure, The Pretenders
> 
> Also the idea of Five choosing to be named Five so Reginald would call him by his name is not mine but I cannot find the post that suggested it and I’d be happy to give credit if someone points it out.


End file.
